Wow, look at all this. Thanks, one and all.

You know what makes my day, though. It's the admission that one person who was a guest went from guest status to full membership, and can now join the rest of us. Not that my threads and posts have anything to do with it; but after the commotion that prompted my original post here, this is a welcome, positive, constructive thing.

The other thing about me is that I am not a dog. I am a beast, and make no mistake about that, but I am not a dog -- just a different species of critter. Pack behavior is something I observe without an insider's, well, insight. And I do think of those members whose posts attract each other in bristling, growling clumps as acting out pack behavior. I have to remind myself about the old bark-versus-bite saying. The generation of beasts that raised me, they actually bit. But then, they weren't dogs either.

Today, my family of origin is still a family but they are not my family and I am not one of them. I would be in Dog-knows-how-much-worse shape had I stayed in their predator-territory. I have slowly gotten better; some of them, from my childhood, have slowly gotten worse. It can be the saddest thing in the world to be proven correct, it turns out.

Thanks again for the encouragement, solidarity, and helpful hints!

Oh I almost forgot. How many of you know that the writer known as James Herriot suffered badly from depression? At one point he required ECT -- Dog forbid I ever have to resort to that.