How swift time passes! Already we are starting another year, at least that’s what you humans do.
For us cowdogs, time just goes on, one paw in front of another, keeping an eye on the seasons and years passing as we watch out for you and do our job.
Here we are at another end, bringing the dawn of a new beginning.
I think you can start up anew every day, any day, but it is good to have this one, when the axis turns, this time to 2026.
Surely this past year has been tough for many.
Mercifully we missed a summer of drought and wildfires – but it wasn’t very far away. Others had tornadoes and hurricanes. Some have struggled with illness, sorrow.
We need to gut it out, grip up, carry on.
But we can do it with JOY! Because we have been given one more moment, one more day, perhaps one more year. At this dawn of a grand new year, let us expect pure triumph!
Mom hasn’t had to start chopping the ice on the creek so the cows can drink, feed extra, or collect eggs more often so they don’t freeze. But it does seem like it is dark all the time, although happily we have past the shortest day and add moments of daylight each day, even though it is imperceptible still.
It may be a tough, dark, cold time, but we carry on. We just cowboy up, as my dad would say. What else is there to do, but to charge forward with joy and hope?
Time flies.
Some of us won’t be here to see another sunrise, or the next new year.
But there will be new ones to welcome.
Sometimes it is like we are on the slickest sled on an icy slope, picking up speed, fast and out of control!
It is a merciful thing, I suppose, that people don’t know what the future holds. Might as well just look forward with joy, I say.
Being a Heeler, I know about joy. I suffer, as do most cowdogs of my kind, from irrepressible Joie de Vive; I don’t speak French much, but I’m told that means “delight in being alive”.
It means we find happiness, jubilation, humor, glee, JOY in everyday moments and in everyday.
With joy, or maybe a cause of it, is hope.
There is hope in: sunshine, longer days, bare roads and climbing temperatures. We have none of those things right now, but they will come. It is a blessing to have a little less cold, a sunny day, a plowed road. Other times, there is hope in rain, or friends, or a job, or the end of a storm. All the promise a new day brings, anytime of the year. I guess hope is faith, is trust in God who after all has a handle on all our stuff.
I know something about hope. I have chased cows through mud, snowdrifts, rocks only to have them scatter. I’ve been kicked and rolled down banks, I’ve hurtled through sagebrush and gravel, fallen off four-wheelers …just plain knocked down over and over.
It is hope – and a big dose of Heeler grit – that gets me up and back at it. 
I bet there is someone out there right now that needs hope, and this cowdog is here to tell you to HOLD ON! Grasp hope and faith, with all the grit you can!
A cowdog’s trials are a little different than yours, but it is still the same inner grit that stands you up and makes you soldier on. I will lend you my grit and hope, if you are a little low right now. Ask any Heeler out there – we all have it to share.
Now we have the full January “Wolf Moon”.
One of many names, it comes from Celtic, Old English, Colonial or Native history, and is probably related to hearing wolves howl on cold, long, dark nights. I’m sure that is worse than coyotes, and I do not like hearing them at all!
As we have a sunset to end the day, 
So every sunrise brings fresh hope for the new day we are gifted.
I didn’t see midnight to ring in the New Year, but Joy to the world, and to all my friends!
May you awake with joy and hope.
It is next year!
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him.” – Romans 15:13
