Hi Martha,

Thought you might like to read what's going forth.

March 18, 2008

10:29 a.m.

Professor to the World . . .

She died. She simply died.

I saw the last pulse vanish out of her arm as the veterinarian's needle

extracted her life away.

Her name was Professor.

Her head dropped from my arms 9 years ago today, at this very minute,

as I am writing to you all between miracles and tears.

On this day I turn a story over to you, a national story.

Stories by the Sky Full

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Throughout this new year, newspapers, magazines and every horn blowing media mouthpiece will call out, “Introducing Professor Zimbabweeps!”

The story of Professor, a throwaway dog turned international icon for miles upon miles of families worldwide, will thread through the media like the tail of a firecracker.

Story excerpts from New Delhi, India to Rome, Italy where hands reach across oceans to hold hope together for thousands of animals gunned down by an insidious tormentor disease . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . my stories will be yours.

Let me start by telling you . . .

. . . . . the story of the moment when my heart leaped across a room onto a grey metal exam table at Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine. Doctors told it, "We have some shocking news. Professor has cancer." Unshielded and iced, that heart of mine stood tall, beating against the news. I, on the other side of the room with nothing beating in my chest, died, I simply died.

Since that occurrence 10 years ago, Professor's soul and I have a book in the making, Professor in the Sky with Diamonds.

Let me begin on this anniversary of one dog within one and only animal kingdom by storytelling to you from that book. I'll take you along the way, meeting a nation full of goose bump raising testimony to life, and prove to you the absence of death.

Fondly,

Andrea Spencer