Last month Joan Raymond at Newsweek.com wrote to ask if I would be willing to be interviewed for an article about people who have granddogs instead of grandchildren. Well, yes. What grandparent wouldn’t jump at a chance to talk about her grandbabies? 🙂
So we had a nice chat and I sent her a couple of pictures. She didn’t use my very favorite, the one of Sammy and Banshee in their new car, but she did use this one of Banshee as part of her header.
This is what she wrote about us:
There’s probably nothing sweeter than a grandparent-granddog reunion. Jean Browman and her husband, Andrew, make their home in New Mexico. Their only child, Kaitlyn, and her husband, Torben, live out of state, with their golden retriever, Sammy. Jean Browman has no regrets about having only one child, and no regrets about her child choosing not to have children. “What I want most is my daughter’s happiness,” says Browman, who sees Sammy only a few times a year. “He goes crazy when he sees us,” she says. “We’re the good guys, the guys with great big smelly dog bones.”
Browman also knows a little granddog heartache. Sammy’s companion, a golden retriever named Banshee, died in the spring. Before the dog’s death, Kaitlyn and her husband brought Banshee to see the Browmans and to take another run through the mountains of New Mexico. But Jean’s fond memories of the dog make her smile. One of her favorite pictures shows Banshee wearing a beret and holding a paintbrush in her mouth—a picture Photoshopped by Browman. “She brought out my inner artist,” says Browman with a laugh. “What a great and good dog.” In the eyes of a grandparent, there’s no such thing as a bad one.
She spelled Kaitlin’s name wrong and a detail or two aren’t strictly accurate, but she did a great job capturing the spirit of the relationship. I’m smiling from ear to ear as I think of it. How cool is that?
(For the full article click here.)
