I would like to call this post SABINE.  I do so because Rod, Eddie and I each had a special relationship with SABINE and could even say she was a favorite to each one of us.

Sabine was a dog.  I mean a dog as in an animal with four legs and a tail.   The background - when I first went to France in 1967, my then girlfriend, the brilliant and beautiful Susan Hathaway who has since passed away, came to join me there.  But while I was studying with Nadia Boulanger and working hours a day so as not to be humiliated and disgraced in both the private meetings with Mlle Boulanger and, worse, the classes where every single other student was better prepared and trained than I was. That left Susan on her own a lot.  What's not to like, on one's own in Paris, 1967?  But she became increasingly lonely and depressed.  My solution - typical shallow solution that I am good at - was to get a dog.  So, I trundled out to the country and picked up Praline, a mix of a whippet and a terrier, a dog whose running speed was something like 500 miles per hour and who was completely wild.  The priests who lived below me hated her, and Susan didn't particularly like her either. So my solution failed.  But Praline was a good dog, and when I returned to the US in the fall of 68 I brought her back and left her with my parents in the dog -friendly home in Olcott.

Then, in 1969 when I went back to Paris, the first thing I did was to go out to the SPCA ( called SPA in France - go figure) and picked up another mutt, named her Sabine on the spot and brought her home.   A week later two things happened.  First, Sabine seemed to be very ill and in fact was diagnosed to have distemper which , the vet told me, would result in death pretty quickly.  He told me that maybe, just maybe, if I fed Sabine freshly cooked warm scrambled eggs and , get this, cow's cheeks, the dog might live.   As I lived one or two blocks from the famous St. Germain covered market, getting the cows' cheeks wasn't an issue and thus I began the program for my little Sabine.

But I was back studying with Mlle Boulanger and that required 4000% or more focus.  Luckily, a solution appeared, and it was Rod Novak.  Rod, with whom I had gotten close in the late 68 semester and in early 69 when we both hung out with the SDS people, and Rod, from whom I could buy hash which I had become fond of in my first go round in Paris, had traveled to England, purchased a motorcycle which had broken down on his way to Paris, had somehow ended up in my apartment while he was planning his recovery of the bike, and was the perfect caretaker for Sabine.  Rod was really good with Sabine ( as was the string of other friends who came through town that summer of 69 ) but it was Rod who helped to save Sabine's life.  

Sabine recovered and even had a wonderful love affair with a dog named Pils, a German sheppard who lived at the Old Navy cafe on the Boulevard St Germain and who would cross the boulevard on his own each morning, somehow open the door to the courtyard at 33 rue du four where I lived on the third floor, and would come up to my door and wait for his girlfriend to go out for a morning walk.  

I digress.

Fast forward, we of King Harvest were living in a wonderful converted farmhouse in Orgeval, about 25 miles west of Paris, where we had quite a sizable walled-in garden, perfect for Sabine.  So, she had Eddie, Rod, Wells and me as her loving caretakers and had her own mansion in the countryside.  But it was Rod who really best expressed feelings for Sabine. And here's how.  Eddie and I came back to the house one night in the fall after some bike ride through the countryside. The fireplace was blazing, and someone was playing the guitar.  As we approached, it turned out to be Rod, sitting with Sabine's head resting on his lap, and singing the final lines to his song ......." and I'm a boy and you're a dog and never shall we marry".