{ A Month of Thanks) My dog

With eye upraised his master's look to scan,

The joy, the solace, and the aid of man:

The rich man's guardian and the poor man's friend,

The only creature faithful to the end.

George Crabbe

I wanted you for a very long time.

You see, it's very hard for me to to successfully carry out this thing called life without a four-legged, hairy animal at my side.
It seems that dogs help define me as a person so, the years that I was without a dog (college, single, early marriage)...well, the memories of those times will always have a dog-shaped hole in them.

But here you are, in all your Australian Shepherd hairyness and herdingness, your Labrador chewiness, and your Beaglesque diggy/sniffiness.   And who could have imagined that the sum would be greater than the parts? I sure didn't.  Just a little over two years ago, if you had asked me what I was thinking about you...well, you would have found that the praise and adoration didn't come all that quickly.

I almost lost my mind over you.

But, who you were, deep beneath the trouble you caused and the havoc you wreaked, well, that is what saved you.

Because, at the end of the day, you don't seem to remember that I screamed at you that morning or that we forgot to feed you until noon or that we shoo you off of the bed just as you've dozed off.  You just choose to leap for joy at our return, lick the tears from our faces and bark at all of those horrible vicious squirrels that are trying to take over our yard.

All of that and

when we are walking freely, taking in the air and the sunshine and all that is glorious about this world, well

   you

      always

         wait

            for

              me.

I am joy in a wooly coat, come to dance into your life, to make you laugh!

Julie Church