As soon as I read this, I thought of a story my mom is very fond of telling. (My mom isn't a professor like Owl's but she has the same habit of telling and retelling and reretelling stories.) When she was a child, she grew up on a farm in Missouri. She had experiences with cattle, horses, more cattle (Grandfather was fond of taking pictures of his cattle and hanging them around the house), and of course, dogs.
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| http://www.dailypuppy.com/puppies/hogan-the-german-shorthaired-pointer_2007-05-14 |
In fact, there was a dog in the exact same position as described in the quote. Honey was Grandfather's hunting dog but she had grown old and spent most all of her time tied to a concrete slab out by the farm house. My mom was terrified of that dog. She was always ill-tempered (unsurprising considered isolation) and rather scary for my young mother. All the growling and snapping convinced her at a young age that she never wanted a german short-haired pointer. She took the one bad experience with one dog to set herself against the entire breed.
And then I came home from the neighbors with Rosie in tow.
She wasn't happy.
Rosie was a german short-haired pointer who was known to roam the neighborhood. She was a sweet thing about 2 years old who had spent most of her life as a tramp begging food scraps from the retired members in the neighborhood. I remember Ali and Carson -the kids next door- taking me to meet her. I couldn't believe how incredibly soft her ears were or how completely trusting she was of our little gang of kids. Using the kid logic that is so beautifully simple, I decided my family needed a dog and she was just the one for us. I promptly took her home, fed her a slice of cheese, and designated her as "my Rosie." My mom, unwilling to refuse my friend because she'd been promising a new dog for some time, swallowed her apprehension and allowed me to keep Rosie if she was still in the yard by the next morning.
Well, daybreak came and Rosie had spent the entire night under my window. So true to her word, we took Rosie to the vet and she became my new closest friend. Still, Mom was always really nervous and hesitant around Rosie. If it weren't for my adoration, I don't think she would have ever given the stray a second glance.
But, years went by and attitudes changed. My mom, an avid health nut, began to take Rosie on her three mile jogs around the neighborhood. There was never a need to put Rosie on a leash because she knew the way almost better than we did. She'd always run ahead and do some off road exploring but always came back to check in. I'd go with them every once and a while and it was rather comical to have mom and I puffing up the hill while Rosie stood at the top, checking to make sure us, her "owners", could actually handle it. Actually, I got that feeling from her quite often. That Rosie was the one protecting me from the big bad world instead of the other way around. She would wait on a hill for the bus to deliver me home each day and kept me company in the living room when I decided to watch a scary movie.
As for Mom, it took a while but she took Rosie into her heart just as much as I did. They became inseparable running buddies. In fact, when Rosie died, my mom couldn't go running for a long time after. It felt too awkward and empty with seeing her head pop up between the cedar trees along the road.
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| http://www.davidfoster.tv/dave-rave-7-kinds-of-pastors-i’d-run-from/ |
"Everything you do to us will happen to you; we are your teachers, as you are ours. We are one lesson." (613)
My mom learned a lesson on not to judge based on a single experience. And I'd like to think that Rosie learned how to settle down and be a part of a family. She didn't have to be a vagabond looking for scraps. She had a home, a family, and a routine in which were hers and hers alone. I believe everyone was changed for the better, no matter how painful it was to lose her.
