My life has gone to the dogs..

I have had dogs.  Usually big dogs.  I realize more and more often the true gift that they are..that they are the purest definition of unconditional love.  They make me a better person...and I look forward to their antics every single day.  I think I'm more successful figuring out my pooches than I've been figuring out my children...at least the older ones.  It's a bummer I didn't recognize that as a kid, I basically ignored the dogs I had..  But they still loved me, and all dogs go to Heaven so I'll see them and apologize.

I've/We've got Lexie, the Lab, Roxie the Boxer, Breezy the pit.terrier and Blazer, the Jack Russell.  Recently we/I have gone through an ordeal from hell with the little guy, the only male, Mr. Blazer.  He got devastatingly ill and went instantaneously blind.  I've had to question whether I am making him better for me or for him.  I've held him while he literally howled in blind pain.  No pun there...and my heart nearly broke into irreparable pieces when I thought we were going to lose him.  Now, I'm responsible for a blind dog.  I've learned some valuable pieces of dog behavior today - that he cannot tolerate being caged, behind a closed door or away from me when I am home.  I imagine how terrified he is when continually crashing into things -- some things quite painfully.

I applaud the smallest victories and share them like a baby's first steps.  He went from the dog least likely to be around (the neighborhood was his) to the dog most anxious to find a familiar smell.  That the frantic sniffing when he first finds me is his way of identifying who he's sniffing, panic at not seeing me, and finally after 10 minutes of reassurance, he's okay again to find his way around and listening for any sound of food preparation. For 7 years Cameron's dog has NEVER been seen pooping!  Now, it's like a man with a stutter...he appears to have poop OCD.  He spins and sniffs and turns and licks and it goes on for at LEAST 8 minutes..rain or shine.  It's quite the ordeal.  And if he "hears" us watching, it starts all over again, as if we'd finished his sentence for him and he indignantly begins the story all over again.  My husband said he was surprised it didn't come out like Ppppppapoop... and of course we laughed.  Don't finish his sentence...HE wants to do it.  He wipes his paws, sniffs the air, and frantically looks for me again.  His world is so much smaller now, and mine is becoming more so.  I have to care for him a majority of the time...he is teaching me not to be selfish.  I have to work around his needs, not mine.  I have to slow down and smell the poop -- not necessarily the flowers.  And with each little bark, I smile.  He didn't bark for so long that the sound is now cheerful. 

In each day we have so many lessons to learn.  We have to stop, 8 minutes at a time, to recognize the miracles in those lessons.  And if it's all about shit, and I learn humility, it's a good day.