You and Atticus received the Human Hero Award tell us about that night and that terrific
honor uh we uh given the award at the MSPCA at the JFK Presidential Library and they give
out four awards a year a Young Hero Award uh a Animal Hero uh a humanitarian award which
went to Emmylou Harris Amanda McDonald a young woman who fought against greyhound racing
in the election that year uh won it for the Young Hero Award and the Boston police dogs
got it for Animal Hero Awards it's so funny that Tom Ryan and Atticus M Finch are co recipients
of the Human Hero Award because it's takes it took a dog it took two dogs and a very
incredible breeder to make me uh more human and uh one of the things I did with Max and
I talked about this in the story Max never got to see the places Atticus got to see but
I wanted Max to have a life and I wasn't sure why I saved most of his ashes so when we hiked
the forty eight four thousand foot peaks those winters I would sprinkle a little bit of his
ashes on each peak so Max is up here along with my father but there's a part of Max that
was also deposited at the JFK Presidential Library and I'll never say where so they can't
get him out of there good for you tell us about your connection back to Paige if I'm
right about something somewhere along the way a romance or a romantic interest develops
I think seven years of a common interest in Atticus or six and a half years of a common
interest uh was going on and I was reviewing my life with Atticus because I decided I wanted
to write a story and someone a reporter once asked me did you do the hikes to write about
it or did you do the hikes because you loved it and then write about it 'cause you're a
writer I said I wrote about it after the facts uh and I was sharing some stories with Paige
and sending the stories back and forth and we were e-mailing back and forth and then
it became more and more connected and we talked more and more and e became more human and
for the first time we weren't always talking about Atticus were talking about her life
and my life and right around the time we got the Human Hero Award I told her it was as
much her award as it was mine and if she had been there I would've had her on stage with
us to share it with her and I had no idea her life had been so bad I had no idea she
had had such a tough time of it and I also had no idea I would later learn that she gave
up the dog she didn't want to give up and she would tell me in those months before right
after we got the award and I got to know her better and every time she sent a puppy off
to live with somebody she'd feel she was sitting on a shore and sending off each puppy in a
little boat to go live a life where they were loved and happy and connected and safe and
nurtured and she said because they were living the life I couldn't live but when she was
a little girl at one point when things were happening bad to here she had told her mother
some day I'm going to run two thousand miles away and live in the mountains where no one
can find me and little did she know that when she sent off Atticus to me and little did
I know that things would transpire and I would send her e-mail pictures and she'd touch the
screen of seeing him on Mt.
Washington or Bondcliff or Lafayette and she would trace her finger on the mountains that
he was standing on top of and look at things she had seen and he was without me knowing
it was living the life she wished she had In the mountains Atticus became more of what
he had always been and I became less less frantic less stressed less worried and less
harried I felt comfortable letting him lead and he seemed to know what I needed he always
chose the best route if ever there was a question and my only job was to follow most important
though what made us happiest was being together in a place where we could be equals and there
were no rules to adhere to This excerpt is brought to you by the Massachusetts School
of Law