In Memorium: Leopold "Leo" Treasure Springer

Yesterday at about 3:45pm, my baby/little brother/best friend, Leo, died of a ruptured tumor near his heart.

We had no idea that he even had a tumor, and he was completely fine yesterday morning when I took him and his brother, Jersey, for a walk. It wasn't until about 2:00pm that he started showing symptoms (throwing up and lying unresponsive out on the back lawn), and within the next two hours he was gone.

It's too fresh on my mind for me to want to get into the details of the event, but I was at work when it happened. I got constant texts from my sister letting me know what was happening, and then I got the phone call I wasn't prepared for. My coworker took over the reception desk and let me go home early because I was such a wreck.

I'm just glad that I took the time to take him for a walk yesterday morning. Sometimes I put it off until evening or just skip a walk day. This morning I took him on a long loop down a street we don't usually go down. He barked at a few dogs and children on bicycles as he loved to do, and then when we got back I gave him a thorough brushing (another thing I sometimes skip). I gave him and Jersey a treat for being so patiently brushed, and Leo actually caught the treat for once. He was never a good catch.

One way I cope with losing someone is to try to write down the things I loved about them. So that's what I'm going to do here.

Unlike his brother, Jersey, Leo could roll over. Every time I got a treat and led him over to an open area of carpet, he would flop over immediately. Sometimes he would stop on his back, hoping to just get a belly rub and a treat, but he was pretty good about rolling all the way over.

He never liked to fetch. He's the only golden retriever I've ever met who didn't actually retrieve. Instead we would throw the ball for Jersey, and Leo would chase after Jersey, tugging on his ears or trying to steal the ball out of his mouth. Or he would just sit at our feet and have us scratch his ears while we waited for Jersey to come back.

Cuddling was his best skill. From the day we brought him home he would push Jersey out of our laps and curl up with us. He had this perfect way of flopping right up against your leg and putting his head in your lap. Doing floor exercises was next to impossible because he always took it as an invitation to cuddle. And if you were sitting on the couch, he would come put his head between your knees and look at the floor so you could scratch his neck, as if he were on a massage table. He had these thick folds of skin around his face that made him extra soft and squishy. He was like perfectly adapted to getting petted, and he hated it when we rejected his advances. He was kind of a cuddle junkie. If you stopped petting him, he would shove his nose under your hand to force you to continue. Sometimes, if you were sitting at the dinner table or reading a book or something, you would find a cold, wet dog nose poking up under your elbow, trying to pull your arm over to him.

He wasn't a fan of the back stairs. For some reason, going up and down the longer staircases in the house was no obstacle, but he would take those three back stairs as carefully as if they were coated with glass. He also never picked up on the "ring the bells to tell us you need to go outside" concept. Jersey got it in like two days, but Leo always just did this half-hearted little whoof and whine to make us come to the door. I tried to get him to ring the bells before I let him out, but he'd just crane his neck, lift his paw, and kind of scratch at the air a few inches away from the bells. Little stinker.

Even when he was the one to ask me to open the door, he would concede and let Jersey go out first if he wanted to--Leo could be halfway out the dog door, and Jersey would try to push past him, preventing either of them from getting out. Leo would just back out and let Jersey go ahead. He could be very non-confrontational with Jersey sometimes.

Dead birds were like heroin to him. He would find them all the time when we went hiking, and because he knew he wasn't supposed to eat them, he would proceed to munch on them as fast as he could. I will not miss having to wrestle dead, half-eaten birds out of his mouth.

Another thing he loved to chew on was paper towels and toilet paper. We would catch him getting into the bathroom trash all the time. But it was so funny the way he would hold his find up in the air and prance around with it that sometimes we would give him a paper towel just to watch him. It was like a party trick whenever we had guests over.

He also loved ice cubes. Jersey does too. I have no idea why. Sometimes we would just give them ice cubes instead of actual dog treats so they wouldn't get fat.

When we went on walks, Leo was the pack leader. He peed on everything and led the charge whenever we passed other dogs or people on bikes. He was an absolute terror off-leash. Never came back when we called. For years he would pull on the leash, too, but we eventually got him out of that habit. Still, he would do this little growl-and-bounce routine whenever he wanted to tug on the leash and chase something. He got his hackles up easily, but never hurt anything. He was all bark and no bite.

Because he knew I tended to make false starts to walks (get their leashes then put on my shoes then grab my coat then go outside), he would pretend like he wasn't interested in going. Jersey would follow me around with unmasked interest, but Leo would lie down a few feet away and pretend to be chill. But his eyes always followed me, and as soon as I gave any sign that it was time to go, he would flip out and leap to his feet.

Then after walks, he would always sit right when we got in the door so that you could take his collar off more easily. Jersey has still not mastered this.

He once jumped out of a moving truck, taking Jersey with him and making it so that we had to take Jersey in to the vet to get stitches on the joint of his back leg. This was on my birthday. I was not happy with him.

He could destroy a squeaky toy in five minutes flat. Jersey tended to be more restrained with his toys (because he actually liked to play with them), but once Leo got them he would just tear out the stitches, then the stuffing, then eat the squeaker. He destroyed Jersey's tennis balls, too. He never liked fetching them, but I guess he saw how much Jersey loved them and decided to ruin Jersey's fun out of jealousy.

He liked chewing bones, but only after Jersey softened them up for him. His teeth got really brown and gross if Jersey ate the bone in one sitting and didn't give Leo a turn.

Tug-of-war was his favorite pastime with Jersey, and they'd also wrestle. Jersey liked to roll on his back and kick at the air, and Leo would copy him, usually flopping on top of Jersey. Leo was almost always the instigator of their play fights. All he had to do was walk slowly up to Jersey, posturing and avoiding eye contact, and Jersey would take the bait. Sometimes they'd get so heated that they would turn into real fights. These always ended with a bout of sneezing.

He loved water. When we had a pool in Arizona, he would sometimes just go down on the steps and soak for a bit. He only ever actually swam when one of us was waiting in the middle of the pool. Then he'd swim over and have us hold him. He also swam after ducks out on lakes. Usually they were too far out for him to be interested in chasing, but this one time there were baby ducks close to shore. Leo wasn't really going to go after them, but the mama duck freaked out and did the "fake broken wing" trick and splashed and quacked so much that Leo couldn't resist. Jersey followed, of course. It took us a long time to get them back to shore and leashed.

Leo may have loved water but he hated baths. He also hated getting his nails clipped, or having any medicine applied to his ears or fur. He was always so sweet about it, though, crawling up to you on his belly and rolling submissively onto his back to suffer whatever treatment you had to give him. The only problem with this was that he'd do this when you needed to hose him down or put flea medicine on his back.

I think he liked being brushed, because whenever I brushed Jersey first, Leo would come up meekly and try to put his head under the brush. I guess it was similar to being petted. He got all sad when I told him to wait his turn.

He didn't shed as much as Jersey. His fur was thinner and I could brush his whole coat without ever having to clean the brush out. His fur was darker than Jersey's too.

Sometimes he laid on the floor and then used his huge dog bed as a pillow.

He randomly chewed this one spot on his left wrist, leaving a little dime-sized sore. We never learned why he did that.

As he got older, his nose turned brown (instead of black), and got little black spots all over it. He also went grey around the eyes and nose, and had a little tiny grey tip to his tail. And he farted and snored a lot these last few months of his life.

The cat didn't get along with him as well as she gets along with Jersey. I never once saw her try to rub up against Leo the way she does with Jersey.

I don't know if he was jealous of the cat or just didn't really know his own name very well (which was very possible, since we tended to just say "Leo! Jersey!" and have them both come at once), but he would always come when I called to the cat. It was probably just the baby voice that he associated with cuddling.

I called him "Bug" sometimes. No idea when or why that started. I also sometimes called him "Leopolio."

Our time together was wonderful. We got him when I was a junior in high school, and so much has happened since then. I was at college and on a mission for a lot of it, but he and Jersey were always so happy to see me when I came home. I'm so glad that I've been living at home these last three months, so that I could see my little Bug every day before he died. And he got to see snow. I'm glad he finally got to see snow.

We're going to miss him so much this summer. We had big dreams to take him to the ranch and to the cabin and to Lake Powell and to all our favorite Utah haunts. It won't be the same with just Jersey. I'll no longer be "that girl who's always walking the two identical, beautiful retrievers." I'll just be a girl with a dog, like everyone else in Daybreak.

But Leo had a good life. I don't regret a single moment of it, and I'll treasure his memory forever.

Rest in peace, Leopold "Leo" "Bug" "Leopolio" Treasure Springer. We loved you so much and we miss you already. We hope God gives you lots of paper towels to play with.

UPDATE: My sister Sarah wrote her own blog post (read it here), and she has many more photos than I posted. They're adorable! Please go check them out. 

Freewrite: "Search them diligently..."

It's too late/early in the week for me to do a Sunday Soliloquy, but that's basically what this is.

This morning I finally put into effect my long-planned goal to start a new scripture study journal and read a brand new, unmarked Book of Mormon all the way through.

Since my mission, I've been good about reading the scriptures, but I've been getting pretty lax about searching, pondering, and praying about them. So today I went out on my front porch, away from all distractions, and read the scriptures while the sun rose.

It felt amazing--the perfect start to my day, and the perfect start of a new goal.

I didn't start from the very beginning of the Book of Mormon, though. I've read 1 Nephi so many times that I just couldn't make myself start there today. It carries this reputation of false starts, in my experience. I must have read 1 Nephi a hundred times, and the rest of the Book of Mormon only four or five times.

Instead, I started in Mosiah, and that ended up being a very inspired decision.

Mosiah 1:3-7 is all about the scriptures and why it's important to study them continually.

Why having scriptures is a blessing
* "Were it not four these plates, which contain these records and these commandments, we must have suffered in ignorance, even at this present time, not knowing the mysteries of God" (vs. 3). If it were't for these records of God's people and His works on the earth, our society would have dismissed God and religion LONG ago.

* "It were not possible that [we] could have remembered all these things, to have taught them to [our] children, except it were for the help of these plates" (vs. 4). The scriptures make it easier for us to pass on our knowledge of God accurately and powerfully.

* They put "[God's] commandments always before our eyes" (vs. 5), thus helping us do the Lord's will and live knowing that we're doing the right thing.

Why we need to continually study them
* "That thereby [we] can teach them to [our] children, and so fulfilling the commandments of God" (vs. 4). It's a commandment to raise our children in righteousness, and the scriptures help us to do that.

* "That we might read and understand [God's] mysteries" (vs. 5). The scriptures give us a sure foundation, to help us understand why things happen the way they do in our lives. For example, were it not for my knowledge of God's Plan of Salvation (which I learned through the scriptures), it would have been infinitely harder for me to lose friends and family.

* We need to continually remind ourselves of the commandments we're supposed to be keeping (vs. 5). I can feel my spirituality and obedience fade away the longer I go without studying the scriptures. It's the "out of sight, out of mind" principle. Hence my new goal.

* They contain so much knowledge that we can use even in our secular lives (vs. 7).  Questions of how to treat our fellowmen, how governments should be run, how we should have a good work ethic, how to raise families and the like are all addressed in the scriptures. There's a reason why our nation has flourished so long--because it was founded on principles of Christianity as found in the Bible. The more we give up those principles, the more our society will fall apart.

* Finally, it's a direct commandment from God to study the scriptures (vs. 7). In Leviticus 25, the Lord commands Joshua, "This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success." Obviously, since Leviticus is found near the beginning if the Bible, God was referring in this instance to the Law of Moses, but it can be applied to the rest of the scriptures that have been recorded since Joshua's time.

Most importantly for me, reading the scriptures reminds me of this promise, also found in Leviticus 25: "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest."

Deadline: The 2015 Whitney Awards

Surprise! Bet you weren't expecting a "Deadlines" post, were you? I bet you even forgot those exist, didn't you??

Really, I feel bad that I let my personal blog become a blog filled with only book and movie reviews. The problem is that I don't really have any deadlines anymore. I'm a receptionist. I don't have any major projects that I need to work on.

Should I have more projects in my life? Probably.

But then I just remembered that I am sort of working on something that need to be done by a certain date, so that kind of qualifies. What's going on is I'm helping Deseret Book read and vote for the best books written by LDS authors, who will receive Whitney awards in May.

What are the Whitney Awards, you ask? Ha ha ha! Ignorant non-editors... Just kidding, I had no idea until I got this assignment.

The Whitney Awards were named after the apostle Orson F. Whitney, who said that Latter-day Saints would have "Miltons and Shakespeares of our own." Founded in 2007, the Awards, a kind of autonomous entity of LDSStorymakers, is designed to help recognize the talents and achievements of LDS authors.

So every year, people go to whitneyawards.com and nominate their favorite books by LDS authors. They had to have been published that year. No endless-repeat wins for Ender's Game.

And the awards given are separated into a bunch of categories. Just go to the website for more info: I don't feel like writing them all out and explaining them.

I'm helping read the finalists for General Fiction. I can't tell you what I think about them yet, obviously, but it's been occupying my time and thoughts for the past few weeks. I've already read three of them, and have two more to go. My reviews of all five are due back by April 25, and then Deseret Book needs to send their final reviews by April 30. I think what happens is DB takes the votes of all the reviewers and combines them to form one final vote for "Best of..." in each category.

In all honesty, I kind of wish that I'd been chosen to read the Speculative Fiction section, because that includes Words of Radiance. But I guess it's a good thing I'm not, because then I would pick WoR out of my unbridled love for Brandon Sanderson, then not really care about the rest. I HOPE HE WINS!!! I'm a little afraid that whoever is reading Speculative Fiction will find the book super long and not really get it because it's a sequel. But hopefully the reviewers will recognize pure amazingness when they see it.

Anyways, I just love that this even exists. Heck, I love that LDS Storymakers exists. If you don't know what that is (I laugh at you! JK again.), it's basically a guild/writing group formed by (mainly successful) LDS authors. It's kind of my dream to become a member someday.

There are just so many great stories out there, and fiction by LDS authors) while I may find it cheesy sometimes) tends to have a special feel to it. Not only is it generally cleaner, it's also usually uplifting and inspiring.

I'm enjoying this assignment. It's giving me the chance to not only read more LDS fiction (which I usually avoid), but LDS fiction not published by Deseret Book. It's shown me how vast our network is--as vast as the Church itself, really.

I can't wait to see who wins the Whitneys in May, and I hope to participate every year from now on.

2015 Reading Challenge: The Rent Collector, The Screwtape Letters, and North & South

I've been so bad about blogging lately that this is my attempt to catch up. I've been reading about a book and a half each week, but I've pushed pause on my 2015 Reading Challenge to help instead with reviewing books for the upcoming Whitney Awards. On top of that, I'm still helping to read through the Deseret Book slush pile. LOTS of reading in my life right now...

But I failed to review the last three Reading Challenge books I read, so here we go.

A book set in a different country: The Rent Collector by Camron Wright

My rating: 4 out of 5

Survival for Ki Lim and Sang Ly is a daily battle at Stung Meanchey, the largest municipal waste dump in all of Cambodia. They make their living scavenging recyclables from the trash. Life would be hard enough without the worry for their chronically ill child, Nisay, and the added expense of medicines that are not working. Just when things seem worst, Sang Ly learns a secret about the bad-tempered rent collector who comes demanding money--a secret that sets in motion a tide that will change the life of everyone it sweeps past. The Rent Collector is a story of hope, of one woman's journey to save her son and another woman's chance at redemption.

This was a great book. Even without the pictures of the real-life people at the end of the book, you can tell that the author has actually been to this place in Cambodia and really knows the people. Having lived in a third-world country myself, it felt very authentic. For those who haven't ever experienced a third-world way of living, this book will open your eyes to both suffering and making happiness wherever and however one can.

Of course, my favorite thing about this book was that it was all about the empowerment that comes from learning how to read. I loved that Sang Ly wanted to read because she thought it would help her son have a better life (which is true--education is important) but what really ended up happening was that she learned to appreciate literature for the magic and wonder that it brings to every life--even a life lived in Cambodia's largest municipal waste dump.

The only thing I didn't like about it was that the voice felt American. After reading A Thousand Splendid Suns a short time ago, I was very aware of the word choices and tones that set the voices of other cultures apart from ours. Sang Ly never used American slang or anything--and I never once forgot we were in Cambodia--but something about the way she spoke made her seem American. I don't really know how to describe it. It's the kind of thing I would have loved to research and write a paper about at BYU, but I don't have time to explore that now.

Overall, this is a great book. I think everyone should read it not only to get a glimpse of third-world living, but also so that it can inspire you to read many more books in the future.



A book written by an author with your same initials: The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
(Okay, my initials are C.M.S., but I couldn't find an author with those, so I just shortened it to C.S.)

My rating: 5 out of 5

A masterpiece of satire, this classic has entertained and enlightened readers the world over with its sly and ironic portrayal of human life from the vantage point of Screwtape, a senior tempter in the service of "Our Father Below." At once wildly comic, deadly serious, and strikingly original, C. S. Lewis gives us the correspondence of the worldly-wise old devil to his nephew Wormwood, a novice demon in charge of securing the damnation of an ordinary young man. The Screwtape Letters is the most engaging and humorous account of temptation—and triumph over it—ever written.

I'd skim-read this book in high school before, but this was the first time I really sat down and read The Screwtape Letters cover to cover, and now that I'm older and have made so many mistakes in my life, it really resonated with me.

This is another one of those books where I just want to hand it out to everyone and say, "YOU NEED TO READ THIS!" C.S. Lewis really got it. He'd been there. He had that rare gift of discernment where when he felt tempted, he actually knew exactly what was going on and why.

I mean, evil spirits probably don't write letters or even have uncle-nephew relationships, but everything that Screwtape wrote about temptation hit home with me. I realized how many times I'd given in to weakness for the stupidest reasons, and how even the smallest acts of greediness and pride have drawn me farther away from my Savior. Seeing the seriousness of sin portrayed in a satirical way inspired me to resist those tendencies in myself, which was exactly what C.S. Lewis intended.

There were so many things that I loved about this book, that if I'd gone through it with a highlighter to mark all my favorite parts, almost everything would be highlighted. I'll definitely read it again, and I hope you'll all pick it up too if you haven't already.


A book turned into a TV show: North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

My rating: 5 out of 5

When her father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience, Margaret Hale is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the north of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of the local mill workers and develops a passionate sense of social justice. This is intensified by her tempestuous relationship with the mill-owner and self-made man, John Thornton, as their fierce opposition over his treatment of his employees masks a deeper attraction. In North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell skillfully fuses individual feeling with social concern, and in Margaret Hale creates one of the most original heroines of Victorian literature.

The BBC "North & South" miniseries has long been one of my favorites. My grandma first introduced it to me when I was a sophomore in college. It was four hours long and I was an early bird back then, so we had to watch it over the course of two nights. I was instantly in love with the story. Not only did it have one of the greatest romances ever, but I loved how much it focused on the social and economical turmoil. I also loved that it was a miniseries, not a movie, because it covered all topics very well and made the ending so much more satisfying.

Anyways, when "a book that's been turned into a TV show" was on my list, I immediately chose North and South. I was so excited to read all the internal dialogue that the miniseries had to leave out, and I wasn't disappointed. The miniseries did a good job of representing the book, but it did leave out a lot. As much as I loved the miniseries, I love the book much better.

It was a hard read, though. It was written in the 1850s, so the language is not only British but archaic British. Most books I can read lightly--listening to music at the same time or half-listening to a conversation going on in the room. Not so with this book. I had to bunker down and pay full attention to the words to comprehend it all and really appreciate the story.

But it's worth the concentrated effort, and if you've seen the miniseries and think you love Mr. Thornton, then be prepared to REALLY love Mr. Thornton in the book. Margaret, too, was a much more sympathetic character, and every other character has more depth and clearer motivations.

If you love Pride and Prejudice or Jane Eyre, then I think you'll love this one too.