Rocky Raccoon makes a special personal appearance on East End Avenue. When I came home last night, Mark Tanaka the doorman pointed out our new neighbor who had been strolling up the avenue, spotted Mark and went right up the tree. A moment later I arrived by taxi with my little Digital and fortuitously got a record of our visitor’s presence.

No doubt he/she had been heading toward Carl Schurz park and a little home of his/her own but both Mark and I were surprised to see the critter in the city, speculating as to which bridge or tunnel he/she crossed to get here. Or maybe it’s a descendent of an old family of raccoons who lived here in Manhattan before the Dutch arrived. Whatever the story, Rocky remained up in the tree until long after I’d gone upstairs to my apartment and Mark finished his shift and had gone home.

The owners/operators of this web site are, as readers know, animal people, dog-owners. I’ve actually owned cats too. They’re different from dogs, as you may know, but just as wonderful. I had both dogs and cats as a kid (one dog and one cat at a time; and sometimes either/or). In my twenties and thirties I had cats, and a dog. When I moved to California in my late thirties, I took along five cats and a dog. It was there I began adopting shih-tzus and have always had two or three ever since (as well as a couple of Jack Russells to mix things up).

I adopt because that is how I acquired my first shih-tzu. I say “acquired” as if the dog is a property. I don’t think of animals that way. I think of them as dependents with their own lives, personalities and points of view. They almost always can be as agreeable and probably moreso, than you are. Treated well, they are angels. Treated badly and it’s woeful. Just as it is for the rest of us. Treating an animal well is good for the heart, good for the disposition, good for what ails ya; and good for the rest of us. Mistreating an animal is as cruel and heinous as treating another human being badly. For many people it’s unforgiveable and cause for very harsh punishment. I can’t argue with them.

Abusing is not only bad for the victim but deathly to the soul of the victimizer; you’re life will never be all right. And all of us, if we could, would like our lives to be all right. If you adopt, however, there is love out there, even for us who may feel love lost or forlorn. That love is a very big gift and replenishes the soul. This is what these divine (and they are maybe more divine than we) creatures bring to our lives.

Last night I stopped by the very fancy business offices of Scott Salvatore and Michael Zabriskie, interior designers. They were holding a kick-off party for the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House’s 19th Annual Holiday Bazaar Preview Party which tekes place Saturday November from 6 to 9 pm at Sotheby’s. Their business office is quite fancy. It looks like a luxurious apartment. It looks better than my house which is also my office. Which looks like an office.

Messrs. Salvatore and Zabriskie are also partners in life and have a third member of the family, Butch, an unassumingly confident Yorkshire pudding. S&Z adore this creature. This lucky creature. I took a picture of the trio. It may not seem so but the biggest personality in the room, the personality which dominates the rooms of S&Z is the canine belle in Zabriskie’s arm.

Dear Mr. Columbia,

I just wanted to let you know that thanks to www.nysocialdiary.com, we adopted a beautiful Shih Tzu called Peaches from the Animal Care and Control Center.

My husband is a huge fan of your website and last summer he came across a column you wrote about your own adopted Shih Tzus. We already owned one Shih Tzu (Sasha) and when we saw your article, we decided to give another dog a home.

We clicked onto the link you provided, www.nycacc.org, and found a picture of a very cute, but very bedraggled little Shih Tzu called Peaches.

We went to visit her at the center. She was 12 years old and blind because of cataracts. Her hair had been cut very short and she almost looked bald (I think they had to give her a drastic cut because her hair had been so tangled). She had been there for over a month and it was taking a toll on her. When they took her out of the cage, she was shaking uncontrollably. We brought her home and for the first few days, she stayed in a little dog bed in the kitchen and seemed completely shell-shocked.