Dear Sully

A Letter to Sully the Dog, rescued during COVID-19

Madison Magazine cover story, July 2020

Dear Sully,

I often think about how if people told me, even one month before this COVID-19 pandemic got real, what our lives would look like — schools closed, businesses shuttered, millions unemployed, Olympics canceled, celebrities stricken, face masks and gloves, curbside pickup, refrigerated trucks outside of hospitals — I wouldn’t have believed it. If this were a Hollywood blockbuster or a Michael Crichton thriller, it wouldn’t ring true. I feel the same way about the fact that an 87-pound, silver-whiskered Labrador retriever from Alabama is now snoring lightly at my feet as I type this on a clear April morning.

Sully, you were not in the plans….

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—Maggie Ginsberg is an award-winning freelance writer and monthly columnist in Madison, Wisconsin