Fido

A dog, 'Leao', sits for a second consecutive day, next to the grave of her owner, Cristina Maria Cesario Santana, who died in the week's catastrophic landslides in Brazil, at the cemetery in Teresopolis, near Rio de Janiero, on January 15, 2011. Brazilians Saturday braced for more rain, fearing further catastrophic landslides after walls of muddy water tore through towns and claimed some 550 lives in the country's worst flood disaster on record. (Getty Images/Daylife)

This picture has made me cry.  Seriously.  As I compose this, I'm crying because it is the true meaning of the word fidelity.  The name Fido is a bastardization of the word fidelity.

In Jan Van Eyck's wedding portrait Giovanni Arnolfini and His Bride, a dog is positioned between the two humans to represent fidelity.  The painting is full of symbolism the most notable being the pregnant bride.  This isn't an indication of her current state but it represents fertility.

This has been a rough six weeks or so when it comes to dogs in the family.  Right before Christmas, my brother had to put to sleep one of his dogs.  On Friday, my parents found out that there dog (who is only 5) is having kidney and liver failure. 

I'm going to sign off and give The Calvinator a big hug!