Queen - My little sunshine

It was a litter of ten French Bulldogs. Ten tiny creatures, and I didn’t really know what I was looking for. I crouched down and simply held out my hand. And out of all ten, one untangled herself from the pile, padded across the floor straight to me – and lay down in my hand. She chose me, not the other way around. In that single second, everything was decided.

Three weeks later, at eleven weeks old, I was finally allowed to bring her home. That first night, she cried. This tiny creature, away from her mother and her siblings for the first time, alone in a strange, enormous world. I couldn’t let her cry. So I took her into my bed and laid her against my chest – and she went quiet. Breathed in, breathed out, and fell asleep. She still sleeps there today. Every single night, by my side, her little heartbeat next to mine.

What she couldn’t have known back then: she came into the darkest year of my life. A year I honestly wasn’t sure I would survive. Everything you hear on this album was written in that time. And through every one of those nights, there was a small, faithful creature who never moved from my side. She got me out of bed in the mornings when I saw no reason to get up. She was there when no one else was. I brought a dog home that day – and what I got was a lifesaver.

At some point, words alone weren’t enough. So I wrote songs for her. Three of them tell our whole story – and every line in them is true.

“Queen – My Little Sunshine”

This is the most honest line I have ever written. I have lost people in my life, lost years, almost lost myself. But this little dog sleeping next to me has dried more tears than any person ever could. She is my sunshine – not as a pretty word, but because she pulled me back into the light on the days when I couldn’t find any.

“The Only Crown”

I named her after Queen Elizabeth – on the day the world lost its queen, mine came to me. But the only crown that has ever meant anything in my life carries no jewel.

People have come into my life and gone again. Relationships have broken, closeness has faded, promises have dissolved. But what I have with Queen – that stays. It is unlike anything I have ever known with a human being: unconditional, without judgment, without leaving. No one has ever reached this. There is something magical between us that I have never had with any other living being. Some call it a soul dog. For me, that is exactly what she is: a soul that belongs to mine. She looks at me as if I were the center of the world, and since she has been here, I am never alone.

“I’ll Be Your Shore”

For years, Queen was my safe harbor – every time I was about to go under. The very first line of this song holds our first night: “you curled against my chest and called me home” – she curled against my chest, and with that, I was home. I wrote this song when everything turned around. When suddenly it wasn’t me who needed to be held – but her.

Because a few weeks ago, her own body turned against her. A severe illness is destroying the blood she needs to live, faster than her little body can rebuild it. I stood in the clinic, my girl hooked up to tubes, blood that wasn’t hers running through her veins just to keep her heart beating – and I cried like I hadn’t in a very long time. On that same first night three and a half years ago, it was she who cried, and I took her into my bed and held her until she was calm. Now she is the one who has to fight. And I would give anything, everything, to hold her the same way and bring her safely home.

She is still here. She will sleep next to me again tonight. But the road back is long, and the costs are far beyond what I can carry alone.

If these songs reached you – if even for a single moment you felt what this little creature means to me – then help me save her. Every contribution brings her a little closer to home. And even sharing makes a difference.

A friendship that binds us.

— Ralph