Hattie Mae is our April 13, 2014 pup of the week

This week the Internet was rocked with news that shook the country and roiled the oceans.   Hattie Mae announced her retirement from social life.  She is stepping aside to spend more time with her Mom and Dad, her handmaiden Jackie Lynn (sorry Jackie, it’s true) and her husband Leo (who will still post but is under orders from his wife not to speak of her.).

Hattie has spent the last few years on the small, private, Tanner Brigade site.  But before that she was the single most influential dogs on social media.  A trailblazer in a summer dress and yellow sun hat.  The web designers and investors may have created Doggyspace but it was Hattie Mae who showed us how to use it.

Under her bewitching touch we all learned how to get our secretaries to both take, and post, pictures of us in the most adorable clothes.  She taught us how to take our everyday life and spin it into entertaining and often moving stories.  Hattie Mae was the first to be able to convey a dog’s existence in a way humans could understand.

What she taught us most of all is how to personify compassion.   When one of us goes to the Bridge or gets sick Hattie always knows the right thing to say, whether they be words of kindness or prayer.  Whenever a post is made on our page that brings us comfort we see Hattie’s paw prints leading the pup there.

Under previous ownership DS was like the old west. Anyone, friend or not, could post a comment on your post or page.  There were many dogs on the site, including the owner’s, that were not dogs at all, but humans trolling for arguments.  Hattie Mae, a pup who wears her heart on her fur, was ripe pickings for these trolls, and they soon chased her from the site like uncontrolled mutts at the dog park.  One by one her friends, including us, followed.

After we founded the Tanner Brigade the members spent weeks enticing the reluctant Hattie Mae to join.  When she finally relented she became the heart of our little group.  Every day she made us smile, or she touched our hearts, or stunned us with her beauty.  She was all of ours’ best friend.

We all came together on DS as a group seven years ago, and they have been a wonderful seven years.  But many friends, both dog and human have been lost in that time, and it has taken a toll on all of us.  When you are a loving, sensitive pup like Hattie each passing takes a bit of your soul, and visiting pages that once filled you with joy now becomes a sad reminder of friends lost.  Somewhere, over time, she lost her smile, and she needs time to get her smile back.

We can’t say for sure how long she will be gone.  She may disappear like Garbo, rumored to be at some opulent location, leaving dogs whispering of her imminent return, or, like Sinatra, this may be the first of many retirements.  We hope it’s the latter.

I wonder when I will hear from her again.  I have two thoughts in my mind:  One is getting a postcard from  Fort Hancock, Texas. Fort Hancock... right on the border. That's where Hattie crossed. When I picture her heading south in her own car with the top down, it always makes me laugh. Hattie Mae... who crawled through a river of sith and came out clean on the other side. Hattie Mae... headed for the Pacific.

The other is her sitting at her villa, getting a drink from Jackie, in a chair next to Leo, watching the water.  Leo asks her if the Internet got too big for her.  Hattie takes a drag of her cigarello and says “I am still big, it’s the Internet that got small.”

Whereever you are this one is for you my sister, with love:

I took my love and took it down

I climbed a mountain and I turned around

And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills

Till the landslide brought me down

Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?

Can the child within my heart rise above?

Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?

Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Well, I've been afraid of changing

'Cause I've built my life around you

But time makes you bolder

Even children get older

And I'm getting older too

Well, I've been afraid of changing

'Cause I've built my life around you

But time makes you bolder

Even children get older

And I'm getting older too

Oh, I'm getting older too

I take my love, take it down

I climb a mountain and turn around

And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills

Will the landslide bring you down

And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills

Will the landslide bring you down, oh, oh

The landslide bring you down