I have thought it might be time to change the tagline here to The Golden Thread: Making Meaning from the Middle of the Road because God willing I am in in the middle of my life thread. I'm sharing a morning revelation from a walk with an obstinate girl whom I love, my soon-to-be 13 year old pal, Nui, a lab mash-up of a perfection.
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I have been a dog person since I could articulate. For whatever reason, their paws and tails and quite perfect noses, which I assume the right to smooch on my own pooch whenever I pass, have enthralled me. I’ve had friends, once they are lucky enough to have a soul friend in fur, call me to say: I get it now.
I deeply understand and respect dogs. I think of them as great indicators on how to love and live a day well. In my well-lived four decades, I have been a personal steward to two, magnificent, beyond comparison canines. A friend of mine, a force unto herself, and more a cat person, once said to me: “You have the most marvelous dog. A great being in fur. I think perhaps good dogs is your karmic boon this life.”
I a thousand percent agree with her.
When my first dog passed, I was broken. That’s not the story I am telling here. But suffice it to say, she was sent off with the honoring of one so deserving and many humans would only be so lucky to be safeguarded onto the other side as she was. That story remains in the hearts of those that helped make it so.
When you have lost one dog, you are a bit more conscious of the aging process. My girl, my O.G. island pig hunter, turned cross-Atlantic Princess has entered her Queendom, her elder years. Many people remark on how fit she is; in her younger years she would run up cliffs with her boyfriend in Baha and not one word in that sentence is exaggerated.
Until recently, she has rarely been walked on leash. She walks with me like the companion she is, through city streets, across mountains, oceans, and islands. She has been everywhere and she has been welcomed and cherished in every home she has entered. So when she slowly started to take longer on her solo jaunts in neighboring parks or a a momentary confusion would cross her face, I began to worry.
“Mom,” my practical son would say. “You can’t let Nui off the leash anymore; she just runs away.”
“But,” I counter a nice year old, “she loves it so much. It’s what makes her happy.”
This is a dog that lived her first five years with me able to walk across luscious ground and have coffee with a neighbor, swim in ponds and flesh out pigs, then come home to her bed and snuggles. But something had slowly started to change and I was wondering if letting her off the leash was safe.
So I toggled between letting her off less and where and how I did it, I slowly stated to convince myself it was just better, safer, and easier to mostly keep her on the leash. Then this morning happened. For context, I had a rushed multi-tasked morning and decided to take her down to a nearby field for a swim while I finished up a phone call.
I know this is a no-no because she catches when I am not focused and slips away, which could be fine, but we had to be somewhere in twenty-minutes.
I unchecked her leash; she raced into the water and swam like a hippopotamus. I still chatted on the phone. She came out of the water, looked right at me and ran towards the pond. I called her name, she looked back again to say: I am doing this and left for the pond.
I didn’t have one more high-pitched correction in me from the residual of an up too late toddler, and I spun on my flip flop to head back home and grab the car to pick-up said son up from camp. I wasn’t going to solve anything mad. She was in the neighborhood; it was twelve noon —I hurrampfed back to the house.
I grabbed my keys, a popsicle for my son, and drove the car two minutes and parked it at the spot where we enter the field before I drove off to get my kid. I walked about 100 feet, where she emerged with an obligatory bowed head and a slow wag.
This has happened before, but this morning was different. I didn’t run around and yell her name for fifteen minutes. I didn’t walk through the scenario of she is gone forever; and I get it that this is not the luxury meany dog owners have. She is quite intelligent and she is generally not interested in running away; she is interested in a daily romp and feels less obliged to my timing.
What I saw in not being upset with her, was her answer: Don’t keep me so safe I cannot live. And do not think that because I have aged, I am no longer who I am.
I smiled at her as she did her slow-wag walk.
“I’m not mad at you. Thank you, Nui,” she lifted her head. New name is short for Ahonui — patience with perseverance. She lives every inch of that name. She knows my birthday is next week and she wants to let both of us off the leash a little more and realize no matter where we are on the road, our essence and our need to seek our freedom is still the same.