2006 … To be found by Friend
While I was “mining” landscaping-stones at a construction site near a local truck-stop, my brother & I found (or rather, were found by) the most beautifully friendly white dog. She wouldn’t leave our sides even after we finished our work and were heading homeward, so we stopped off at her presumed residence – a nearby mobile home we noticed on the edge of the site. We knocked on the door and began to compliment the man who surfaced on the wonderful amicability of his hound when he interrupted us with a gruff “That dog’s been bugging me for days. You can have her.” Needless to say, he didn’t have to make the offer twice, and I rode home in the bed of the truck with Nanooka (as Todd named her – claiming it was the Inuit word for polar bear) in my lap. Nooka (as we thereafter often called her) lived quite happily on Alexzanna Farms for the next 10+ years of her life; bringing others at least as much Joy as her newfound freedom brought her …
“Dogs actually do speak, but only to those who know how to listen … Indeed, dogs are our link to Paradise. They don’t know anything of evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden itself … It is in truth the embodiment of peace.” ~ via Orhan Pamuk & Milan Kundera
“Dogs’ lives are short, much too short, but we know that going in. We all know the intense pain of their departure is coming; we know that we’re going to lose our dog, and we know that there’s going to be great anguish when that day indeed arrives. And so we live more fully in our moments with them, rarely failing to share their joy or delight in their innocence, because we simply can’t support the illusion that our dogs can ever be our lifelong companions. And there’s such beauty in the hard honesty of that, in accepting and giving love while being always aware that the same comes with an almost unbearable price. Maybe loving dogs is the way we do penance for all the other illusions we allow ourselves, and for all the mistakes we make because of the same.” ~ via Dean Koontz
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