Old Dogs and Blessings

From time to time I find a post that is written by someone about something that has happened to them. Old Dogs and Blessings is one of those posts.

I spend most of my time reading informational posts that I call “Twitter Fodder” which is not meant at all to be negative. This post was so well written about a subject that is dear to my heart. With the writer’s approval, I am sharing it with you.

I think this is a post that many of us can relate to. We all know about dog rescue but, this post is more like “human rescue” and if there is no term such as that then I have just made it up. Works for me.

While I’ve never been adopted by a dog, I have been adopted by the most wonderful cat anyone could ever have. She was from a litter of 4 wild cats. She decided she would adopt us and so she did. She has been the perfect mix of inside/outside cats. She’s quite old now but seems in good health. I hope she is with us for many more years.

For those who have been adopted by an animal, I know you will enjoy this. For those who have not ever been adopted by an animal here’s what you have to look forward to.

Please enjoy this post called Old Dogs written by Missy Ween

I want to say something here about blessings that come to us which we really did not think we needed or wanted but came anyhow, insisting upon being something sweet in our lives.

We all have some.  Things, places, people, vehicles, jobs, assignments, expectations from someone we love…..or maybe an animal.

During the years when we lived right under the very last tree at the edge of the desert in California, we saw many animals pass through the yard.  Bears, mountain lions and bobcats, snakes of all sorts, roadrunners, and packs of coyotes, and several stray dogs.

We did not need a dog, as we had the best dog on the planet already in our good old German Shepherd. But dogs came anyway.

Starving dogs, mean dogs, injured dogs……and we found places for them all,  but did not keep them.

Then one day this very handsome little black dog, who was, for all the world, Antonio Banderas in a dog suit, showed up.

I am certain that he would have spoken Spanish if he could talk, and he was just the most charming little guy in the way that Latin men often are.

Blessings

So, we looked for his proper home, failed to find it, and then named him Cinder after my mother’s childhood dog, and he stayed.  Now I cannot imagine life without him.  When he came, he was the picture of well-muscled youthful masculinity.   Here he is today, gray and less muscular, but sweeter every day.

Then, shortly after Cinder came, I announced at Thanksgiving Dinner 2000, to all who were present and it was a crowd as I recall, that I did not want any more pets.  None.  I would not accept one if it were given to me.

Old Dogs

So, early the next morning, this lovely gentle giant of a yellow lab appeared in the driveway.  Michael, who was three years old, saw him and said: “Hey Mom, that’s my dog!”    To which I replied something along the lines of “No, honey, your dog is in the house, that’s somebody else’s dog…”   but Michael insisted that it was, indeed, his dog.

I gave the dog water and got busy putting out advertisements for him all over southern California, to which nobody responded.  So we named him Roscoe, and he is still with us.

I did not love him at first, but for some reason he really loved me.

He still will hardly make a move unless I am present, and so I have grown to love him too.  How can you not love someone who’s so devoted to you? Anyway, now he’s almost twice as big as he was when he first came to our door…..I like to think the photo above was him arriving on that fateful day.

He is OLD now, and I think he is not long for this world.  He was quite ill last week, and my neighbor, Jan, heard about his misfortune, and she stopped by with cookies for him. In fact, those are Jan’s cookies next to his old gray head in the picture.   I have never known a dog who received visitors during a health crisis.  But Roscoe is that kind of dog.

He has been famously hunted by the dog catcher, not because he’s dangerous, but because he likes to wander out into the middle of the road directly in the path of the school bus, causing the bus to stop.  Then he waits for kids to get off so he can greet them.

He’s that kind of dog.

And many of our neighbors, knowing that the dog catcher drives through town looking for him, will phone us whenever they see the dog-catcher van coming through our tiny little village.  Everyone loves this old guy.

Today we were out for a walk, and when he went in for his regular swim, he was unable to haul himself out of the river, and I had to get in and drag him on to the shore.  Now he is home and unable to get up….his exerterator being down, as Daniel would say.

I’m not going to write a eulogy for these guys when they are gone, but I wanted to say how thankful I am for them now, while they are still here for us to enjoy.  I did not want either of them, but I am so very glad they came to us.

I wonder how other people have been blessed in similar surprising and strange ways.

I hope you enjoyed this story from Missy Ween. If you’ve experienced being adopted by a pet you know very well what a joy it can be. Visit her blog and find more posts that will hold your interest until the end for sure.

And remember;

“She is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are her life, her love, her leader. She will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of her heart. You owe it to her to be worthy of such devotion.”  ~~Unknown