Thank you

We'll cut to the chase right away:  this post is the last we'll be writing for the Metro DC Dog Blog.  After today, new posts will cease until further notice. Put another way, the blog will be going on hiatus.

After two years and two months plus of writing this blog, we're naturally a little sad to see this era end. But we're also incredibly grateful.

We're grateful to the blog sponsors -- the Northern Virginia Clean Water Partners and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments -- for giving us the opportunity to write this blog in the first place.  These two groups of local government agencies trusted us take their message about dog care and water quality to you. We'll always be grateful for that trust.

We're grateful to Water Words That Work, which took on the tough jobs of setting up the blog, running the blog's contests and promotions, and otherwise freeing us to do what we love doing most:  writing about dogs and the people who love them.

We're grateful to the human members of our family, who helped us come up with ideas for posts and listened to us patiently when we searched for additional ideas. And we're especially appreciative of the role that the canine member of our family --  Allie, our Golden Retriever -- has played. No writer could ask for a better muse.

But most of all, we are grateful to you, our readers. Without your comments here on the blog, your Facebook "likes" and comments, Twitter retweets, poll responses and just general willingness to read and engage with what's been said in this blog -- well, the blog wouldn't have been. Writing's been called a solitary profession, but that's not true. No writer accomplishes anything without readers to read their stuff. You've done that for us, and for that we humbly thank you.