Dale here:

So I'm a day late with the Thanksgiving-with-a-capital-T (why did I just specify that? I wrote a capital T, didn't I?) post, but I don't believe there's any time restriction on just a regular old giving thanks post. In general I don't quite see the point in directing ones' thanks to anyone but the person/animal one is thanking...I know most people take time to thank God, but it just feels wrong to me to thank God (who I don't particularly believe in, but that's beside the point--I would feel this way even if I did) for my friends, or job, or family...because it seems to me implicit that if God/god is giving me friends, job, and family for a reason, then it is for a reason that all the people who are without friends, jobs, and family in the world are being punished for some reason. And I can't accept that--I have done nothing to deserve my immense good fortune and well-being that they have not. If there is a god/God who doles out such things, then it is according to a logic far beyond what I can understand, and I highly doubt that the familiar rules of "please" "thank you" and "your welcome" probably apply in that logical universe.

So I prefer to thank the people for whom I am grateful directly and knock on wood for the rest.

But, there is one exception. How do you thank your dog? I try to tell Sancha every day, I try to show my love and gratitude for her existence in every walk and biscuit (and I try to balance these out, or else I would have the world's only 150lb Chihuahua)...but it's all of no use, of course. She appreciates the walks and biscuits, I'm sure, but doesn't understand the appreciation that comes with them. She can't know how much--despite the evolutionary and practical evidence to the contrary--I depend on her, am sane because of her, function because of her.

And of course she can't read this blog either, but it doesn't feel wrong to "vent" my thanks here. I can't tell her directly and God doesn't seem appropriate--so I split the difference and found the Internet.