Cynthia E. Howden-Fields of Roca, NE died on May 2, 2018. She was born on April 29, 1959. She graduated from the University of Nebraska. She worked for many years with Nebraska Vocational Rehabilitation as a senior counselor.
Survived by husband A.B. Fields; Stepdaughter Jessica Cook, Stepmother Linda Howden.
Memorial service Friday, May 11 at 10:30 a.m. at St. Marks Church, 84th & Pioneers.
Source - Lincoln Journal Star, May 9, 2018
________________________________________________________
Cindy Howden-Fields, 59, of Austin, Minnesota, passed away on May 2, 2018, in Nebraska.
Service: A memorial service/celebration of life will be held at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 4, 2018, at First United Methodist Church with Pastor Arden Haug officiating. There will be a light lunch provided by Lynda Howden at 1200 18th Ave. NW directly after the service.
Source - Austin (MN) Daily Herald, July 29, 2018
_____________________________________________________________________________
The retirement of a baleful Buddha and devoted service dog
By CINDY LANGE-KUBICK / Column
Markie, the woolly and woeful service dog, has gone into an early -- and unwilling -- retirement.
The Chesapeake Bay retriever only is 56 in people years, but the man who helped Cindy Howden-Fields train him advised her to get another dog to take over Markie’s tasks before the dog gets old and crotchety and resentful.
What? You want me to fetch your gloves again? Really? Pick up your own pen off the floor!
And that is why Doc, a young dog in training, is jumping joyfully around Cindy’s yard outside of Roca Tuesday afternoon.
Not to be outdone, Markie bounds behind.
“Oh, company, company, company, isn’t it exciting?” says Cindy, calling the dogs to follow her wheelchair up the ramp and into the house.
Cindy is close to Markie’s age, 53. She has worked 16 years as a vocational counselor -- her motto: “Nothing is more disabling than a bad attitude” -- and got her master’s degree in social work after that day at the racetrack in 1988.
There’s a photograph of her on the kitchen wall shortly before her accident, sleek and blond in blue jeans and riding a thoroughbred around Fonner Park in Grand Island.
She was exercising a 2-year-old when he tried to throw her. He nearly did, and she nearly died -- her right foot stuck in the stirrup as the spooked horse galloped, dragging the young woman from Minnesota for a hundred yards, her head banging into the track’s metal rails, one after another after another.
She was nearly decapitated. She wasn’t supposed to live. She’s writing a book about what came after that day.
Markie sits by Cindy’s chair as she talks.
“Yeah, I’m talking about you,” she tells the dog named after one of her Mayo Clinic doctors, Mark Christopherson.
Markie looks like a Buddha dog. Burly and baleful and wise. Stylish in her pink, polka-dotted collar.
And as loyal as the day is long.
“Markie would die for me,” Cindy says. “Doc would cry hysterically at the funeral.”
Markie was around before husband No. 2, Bob, who Cindy met online three years ago.
“I told him, ‘I have a dog and if she doesn’t like you, you’re toast.’”
She liked him.
Markie takes Bob’s spot in the bed when he gets up to go to work.
She sticks to Cindy like Velcro. On airplanes, on motivational speaking gigs, to church, restaurants, the grocery store.
To LifePointe, where Cindy, who once walked with a walker, goes to exercise, trying to get back out of the wheelchair again.
At least, Markie used to.
Cindy remembers the first day she left Markie at home while she and Doc took off in the minivan.
“I cried all the way to town.”
Cindy lived alone for years after her first marriage fell apart. She had dogs, but they weren’t service dogs, like Markie.
Markie, the dog who retrieves.
“If you threw this chair, she’d find a way to get it.”
Markie, the dog who pulls her weight.
“She’d think it was a lot to ask, but she will help pull me in my manual chair.”
Markie, the dog who protects.
Markie was around the day someone walked in the unlocked back door.
“She started barking and they took off.”
And Markie was on duty in late September, when Cindy finished her daily workout at LifePointe, motored up the ramp to her van and fell as she tried to scoot into the driver’s seat.
“I hit my knee and my leg went out. I was wedged between the seats.”
She couldn’t get up, couldn’t reach her phone. Markie sat still as a statue, waiting like always. Minutes passed, 20, maybe more.
Then, Markie was gone.
“It scared me to death.”
Cindy waited, still trapped, the fitness club nearly empty on the late Friday afternoon. Then out of the corner of her eye, she saw Markie, followed by a man.
A voice: Are you OK?
The stranger helped her into her seat, then retrieved two nurses from the nearby clinic to check her over.
What a smart dog, he told the still-shaken Cindy before he left.
“He said, ‘She found me and led me back down to this van.’”
Isn’t that wild? Cindy says Tuesday afternoon.
“I called my trainer and he said, ‘Well, you need to call her Lassie.’”
Everyone at the fitness club -- and at church and at the mental health center where Cindy volunteers two days a week -- misses Markie.
But Markie is getting her 15 minutes. Cindy sent the tale of his rescue to a Chesapeake Bay breed magazine.
And, eventually, Doc will grow into her new job, and both Cindy and Markie, her loyal and devoted companion, will become accustomed to retirement.
But not yet.
“She hates it,” Cindy says. “She hates it as much as I do.”
Source - Lincoln Journal star, Jan 10, 2013
Survived by husband A.B. Fields; Stepdaughter Jessica Cook, Stepmother Linda Howden.
Memorial service Friday, May 11 at 10:30 a.m. at St. Marks Church, 84th & Pioneers.
Source - Lincoln Journal Star, May 9, 2018
________________________________________________________
Cindy Howden-Fields, 59, of Austin, Minnesota, passed away on May 2, 2018, in Nebraska.
Service: A memorial service/celebration of life will be held at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 4, 2018, at First United Methodist Church with Pastor Arden Haug officiating. There will be a light lunch provided by Lynda Howden at 1200 18th Ave. NW directly after the service.
Source - Austin (MN) Daily Herald, July 29, 2018
_____________________________________________________________________________
The retirement of a baleful Buddha and devoted service dog
By CINDY LANGE-KUBICK / Column
Markie, the woolly and woeful service dog, has gone into an early -- and unwilling -- retirement.
The Chesapeake Bay retriever only is 56 in people years, but the man who helped Cindy Howden-Fields train him advised her to get another dog to take over Markie’s tasks before the dog gets old and crotchety and resentful.
What? You want me to fetch your gloves again? Really? Pick up your own pen off the floor!
And that is why Doc, a young dog in training, is jumping joyfully around Cindy’s yard outside of Roca Tuesday afternoon.
Not to be outdone, Markie bounds behind.
“Oh, company, company, company, isn’t it exciting?” says Cindy, calling the dogs to follow her wheelchair up the ramp and into the house.
Cindy is close to Markie’s age, 53. She has worked 16 years as a vocational counselor -- her motto: “Nothing is more disabling than a bad attitude” -- and got her master’s degree in social work after that day at the racetrack in 1988.
There’s a photograph of her on the kitchen wall shortly before her accident, sleek and blond in blue jeans and riding a thoroughbred around Fonner Park in Grand Island.
She was exercising a 2-year-old when he tried to throw her. He nearly did, and she nearly died -- her right foot stuck in the stirrup as the spooked horse galloped, dragging the young woman from Minnesota for a hundred yards, her head banging into the track’s metal rails, one after another after another.
She was nearly decapitated. She wasn’t supposed to live. She’s writing a book about what came after that day.
Markie sits by Cindy’s chair as she talks.
“Yeah, I’m talking about you,” she tells the dog named after one of her Mayo Clinic doctors, Mark Christopherson.
Markie looks like a Buddha dog. Burly and baleful and wise. Stylish in her pink, polka-dotted collar.
And as loyal as the day is long.
“Markie would die for me,” Cindy says. “Doc would cry hysterically at the funeral.”
Markie was around before husband No. 2, Bob, who Cindy met online three years ago.
“I told him, ‘I have a dog and if she doesn’t like you, you’re toast.’”
She liked him.
Markie takes Bob’s spot in the bed when he gets up to go to work.
She sticks to Cindy like Velcro. On airplanes, on motivational speaking gigs, to church, restaurants, the grocery store.
To LifePointe, where Cindy, who once walked with a walker, goes to exercise, trying to get back out of the wheelchair again.
At least, Markie used to.
Cindy remembers the first day she left Markie at home while she and Doc took off in the minivan.
“I cried all the way to town.”
Cindy lived alone for years after her first marriage fell apart. She had dogs, but they weren’t service dogs, like Markie.
Markie, the dog who retrieves.
“If you threw this chair, she’d find a way to get it.”
Markie, the dog who pulls her weight.
“She’d think it was a lot to ask, but she will help pull me in my manual chair.”
Markie, the dog who protects.
Markie was around the day someone walked in the unlocked back door.
“She started barking and they took off.”
And Markie was on duty in late September, when Cindy finished her daily workout at LifePointe, motored up the ramp to her van and fell as she tried to scoot into the driver’s seat.
“I hit my knee and my leg went out. I was wedged between the seats.”
She couldn’t get up, couldn’t reach her phone. Markie sat still as a statue, waiting like always. Minutes passed, 20, maybe more.
Then, Markie was gone.
“It scared me to death.”
Cindy waited, still trapped, the fitness club nearly empty on the late Friday afternoon. Then out of the corner of her eye, she saw Markie, followed by a man.
A voice: Are you OK?
The stranger helped her into her seat, then retrieved two nurses from the nearby clinic to check her over.
What a smart dog, he told the still-shaken Cindy before he left.
“He said, ‘She found me and led me back down to this van.’”
Isn’t that wild? Cindy says Tuesday afternoon.
“I called my trainer and he said, ‘Well, you need to call her Lassie.’”
Everyone at the fitness club -- and at church and at the mental health center where Cindy volunteers two days a week -- misses Markie.
But Markie is getting her 15 minutes. Cindy sent the tale of his rescue to a Chesapeake Bay breed magazine.
And, eventually, Doc will grow into her new job, and both Cindy and Markie, her loyal and devoted companion, will become accustomed to retirement.
But not yet.
“She hates it,” Cindy says. “She hates it as much as I do.”
Source - Lincoln Journal star, Jan 10, 2013
Cynthia E. Howden-Fields of Roca, NE died on May 2, 2018. She was born on April 29, 1959. She graduated from the University of Nebraska. She worked for many years with Nebraska Vocational Rehabilitation as a senior counselor.
Survived by husband A.B. Fields; Stepdaughter Jessica Cook, Stepmother Linda Howden.
Memorial service Friday, May 11 at 10:30 a.m. at St. Marks Church, 84th & Pioneers.
Source - Lincoln Journal Star, May 9, 2018
________________________________________________________
Cindy Howden-Fields, 59, of Austin, Minnesota, passed away on May 2, 2018, in Nebraska.
Service: A memorial service/celebration of life will be held at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 4, 2018, at First United Methodist Church with Pastor Arden Haug officiating. There will be a light lunch provided by Lynda Howden at 1200 18th Ave. NW directly after the service.
Source - Austin (MN) Daily Herald, July 29, 2018
_____________________________________________________________________________
The retirement of a baleful Buddha and devoted service dog
By CINDY LANGE-KUBICK / Column
Markie, the woolly and woeful service dog, has gone into an early -- and unwilling -- retirement.
The Chesapeake Bay retriever only is 56 in people years, but the man who helped Cindy Howden-Fields train him advised her to get another dog to take over Markie’s tasks before the dog gets old and crotchety and resentful.
What? You want me to fetch your gloves again? Really? Pick up your own pen off the floor!
And that is why Doc, a young dog in training, is jumping joyfully around Cindy’s yard outside of Roca Tuesday afternoon.
Not to be outdone, Markie bounds behind.
“Oh, company, company, company, isn’t it exciting?” says Cindy, calling the dogs to follow her wheelchair up the ramp and into the house.
Cindy is close to Markie’s age, 53. She has worked 16 years as a vocational counselor -- her motto: “Nothing is more disabling than a bad attitude” -- and got her master’s degree in social work after that day at the racetrack in 1988.
There’s a photograph of her on the kitchen wall shortly before her accident, sleek and blond in blue jeans and riding a thoroughbred around Fonner Park in Grand Island.
She was exercising a 2-year-old when he tried to throw her. He nearly did, and she nearly died -- her right foot stuck in the stirrup as the spooked horse galloped, dragging the young woman from Minnesota for a hundred yards, her head banging into the track’s metal rails, one after another after another.
She was nearly decapitated. She wasn’t supposed to live. She’s writing a book about what came after that day.
Markie sits by Cindy’s chair as she talks.
“Yeah, I’m talking about you,” she tells the dog named after one of her Mayo Clinic doctors, Mark Christopherson.
Markie looks like a Buddha dog. Burly and baleful and wise. Stylish in her pink, polka-dotted collar.
And as loyal as the day is long.
“Markie would die for me,” Cindy says. “Doc would cry hysterically at the funeral.”
Markie was around before husband No. 2, Bob, who Cindy met online three years ago.
“I told him, ‘I have a dog and if she doesn’t like you, you’re toast.’”
She liked him.
Markie takes Bob’s spot in the bed when he gets up to go to work.
She sticks to Cindy like Velcro. On airplanes, on motivational speaking gigs, to church, restaurants, the grocery store.
To LifePointe, where Cindy, who once walked with a walker, goes to exercise, trying to get back out of the wheelchair again.
At least, Markie used to.
Cindy remembers the first day she left Markie at home while she and Doc took off in the minivan.
“I cried all the way to town.”
Cindy lived alone for years after her first marriage fell apart. She had dogs, but they weren’t service dogs, like Markie.
Markie, the dog who retrieves.
“If you threw this chair, she’d find a way to get it.”
Markie, the dog who pulls her weight.
“She’d think it was a lot to ask, but she will help pull me in my manual chair.”
Markie, the dog who protects.
Markie was around the day someone walked in the unlocked back door.
“She started barking and they took off.”
And Markie was on duty in late September, when Cindy finished her daily workout at LifePointe, motored up the ramp to her van and fell as she tried to scoot into the driver’s seat.
“I hit my knee and my leg went out. I was wedged between the seats.”
She couldn’t get up, couldn’t reach her phone. Markie sat still as a statue, waiting like always. Minutes passed, 20, maybe more.
Then, Markie was gone.
“It scared me to death.”
Cindy waited, still trapped, the fitness club nearly empty on the late Friday afternoon. Then out of the corner of her eye, she saw Markie, followed by a man.
A voice: Are you OK?
The stranger helped her into her seat, then retrieved two nurses from the nearby clinic to check her over.
What a smart dog, he told the still-shaken Cindy before he left.
“He said, ‘She found me and led me back down to this van.’”
Isn’t that wild? Cindy says Tuesday afternoon.
“I called my trainer and he said, ‘Well, you need to call her Lassie.’”
Everyone at the fitness club -- and at church and at the mental health center where Cindy volunteers two days a week -- misses Markie.
But Markie is getting her 15 minutes. Cindy sent the tale of his rescue to a Chesapeake Bay breed magazine.
And, eventually, Doc will grow into her new job, and both Cindy and Markie, her loyal and devoted companion, will become accustomed to retirement.
But not yet.
“She hates it,” Cindy says. “She hates it as much as I do.”
Source - Lincoln Journal star, Jan 10, 2013
Survived by husband A.B. Fields; Stepdaughter Jessica Cook, Stepmother Linda Howden.
Memorial service Friday, May 11 at 10:30 a.m. at St. Marks Church, 84th & Pioneers.
Source - Lincoln Journal Star, May 9, 2018
________________________________________________________
Cindy Howden-Fields, 59, of Austin, Minnesota, passed away on May 2, 2018, in Nebraska.
Service: A memorial service/celebration of life will be held at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 4, 2018, at First United Methodist Church with Pastor Arden Haug officiating. There will be a light lunch provided by Lynda Howden at 1200 18th Ave. NW directly after the service.
Source - Austin (MN) Daily Herald, July 29, 2018
_____________________________________________________________________________
The retirement of a baleful Buddha and devoted service dog
By CINDY LANGE-KUBICK / Column
Markie, the woolly and woeful service dog, has gone into an early -- and unwilling -- retirement.
The Chesapeake Bay retriever only is 56 in people years, but the man who helped Cindy Howden-Fields train him advised her to get another dog to take over Markie’s tasks before the dog gets old and crotchety and resentful.
What? You want me to fetch your gloves again? Really? Pick up your own pen off the floor!
And that is why Doc, a young dog in training, is jumping joyfully around Cindy’s yard outside of Roca Tuesday afternoon.
Not to be outdone, Markie bounds behind.
“Oh, company, company, company, isn’t it exciting?” says Cindy, calling the dogs to follow her wheelchair up the ramp and into the house.
Cindy is close to Markie’s age, 53. She has worked 16 years as a vocational counselor -- her motto: “Nothing is more disabling than a bad attitude” -- and got her master’s degree in social work after that day at the racetrack in 1988.
There’s a photograph of her on the kitchen wall shortly before her accident, sleek and blond in blue jeans and riding a thoroughbred around Fonner Park in Grand Island.
She was exercising a 2-year-old when he tried to throw her. He nearly did, and she nearly died -- her right foot stuck in the stirrup as the spooked horse galloped, dragging the young woman from Minnesota for a hundred yards, her head banging into the track’s metal rails, one after another after another.
She was nearly decapitated. She wasn’t supposed to live. She’s writing a book about what came after that day.
Markie sits by Cindy’s chair as she talks.
“Yeah, I’m talking about you,” she tells the dog named after one of her Mayo Clinic doctors, Mark Christopherson.
Markie looks like a Buddha dog. Burly and baleful and wise. Stylish in her pink, polka-dotted collar.
And as loyal as the day is long.
“Markie would die for me,” Cindy says. “Doc would cry hysterically at the funeral.”
Markie was around before husband No. 2, Bob, who Cindy met online three years ago.
“I told him, ‘I have a dog and if she doesn’t like you, you’re toast.’”
She liked him.
Markie takes Bob’s spot in the bed when he gets up to go to work.
She sticks to Cindy like Velcro. On airplanes, on motivational speaking gigs, to church, restaurants, the grocery store.
To LifePointe, where Cindy, who once walked with a walker, goes to exercise, trying to get back out of the wheelchair again.
At least, Markie used to.
Cindy remembers the first day she left Markie at home while she and Doc took off in the minivan.
“I cried all the way to town.”
Cindy lived alone for years after her first marriage fell apart. She had dogs, but they weren’t service dogs, like Markie.
Markie, the dog who retrieves.
“If you threw this chair, she’d find a way to get it.”
Markie, the dog who pulls her weight.
“She’d think it was a lot to ask, but she will help pull me in my manual chair.”
Markie, the dog who protects.
Markie was around the day someone walked in the unlocked back door.
“She started barking and they took off.”
And Markie was on duty in late September, when Cindy finished her daily workout at LifePointe, motored up the ramp to her van and fell as she tried to scoot into the driver’s seat.
“I hit my knee and my leg went out. I was wedged between the seats.”
She couldn’t get up, couldn’t reach her phone. Markie sat still as a statue, waiting like always. Minutes passed, 20, maybe more.
Then, Markie was gone.
“It scared me to death.”
Cindy waited, still trapped, the fitness club nearly empty on the late Friday afternoon. Then out of the corner of her eye, she saw Markie, followed by a man.
A voice: Are you OK?
The stranger helped her into her seat, then retrieved two nurses from the nearby clinic to check her over.
What a smart dog, he told the still-shaken Cindy before he left.
“He said, ‘She found me and led me back down to this van.’”
Isn’t that wild? Cindy says Tuesday afternoon.
“I called my trainer and he said, ‘Well, you need to call her Lassie.’”
Everyone at the fitness club -- and at church and at the mental health center where Cindy volunteers two days a week -- misses Markie.
But Markie is getting her 15 minutes. Cindy sent the tale of his rescue to a Chesapeake Bay breed magazine.
And, eventually, Doc will grow into her new job, and both Cindy and Markie, her loyal and devoted companion, will become accustomed to retirement.
But not yet.
“She hates it,” Cindy says. “She hates it as much as I do.”
Source - Lincoln Journal star, Jan 10, 2013
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