Blessed is the person who has earned the love of an old dog..-Sidney Jeanne Seward
I've been lucky enough to have the love of three old dogs in my time. From before I was born through college, I grew up with them and they grew old with me. Each was a member of our family and each of my pups taught me something powerful about life.
Ollie was a mutt through and through. While not entirely sure of her humble beginnings, it quickly became clear that she was one of the more athletic beings the world had ever known. Easily able to clear the highest of fences in a single bound, it was almost as if her gravity was turned to a different setting than the rest of us. Rather than walk out the front gate of our home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she would casually leap over the fence with the ease of someone who was operating in about 5% of their normal gravity. She was famously paired with her long time friend, Cat. Cat was a cat, obviously. My older sister attempted to name Cat, "Lucy" but in the ways that only cats can, Cat, ignored the shit out of that and responded only to Cat. When my mother was pregnant with me, Ollie and Cat would flank her as she paced the house. Because of Ollie and Cat, I'm a big fan of the cat/dog balance, think Sith/Jedi. I'm not equating cats with the Sith but if I were (I kind of am) they would be necessary to bring balance to the force. In her later years, our Ollie dog couldn't clear the fences in the same way but she still found ways to scrabble over them. Have you ever seen a dog climb a fence? It's weird and amazing. Ollie set the standard by which I judged all dogs (and most humans) and while she has been gone for some years now, she is immortalized in a nursery rhyme my parents sang to me and that I now sing to my babies.
Kooler burst onto the scene when I was seven years old. We'd moved out of the city, (way out!) to an old farmhouse in rural Western Massachusetts. In order to help me with the transition, my parents surprised me with a puppy a few weeks after we moved. They snuck him into the den while I was doing something else. A few moments later I walked in, saw a floppy eared puppy, turned on my heel and sprinted back into the kitchen, "There's a dog in the den!" I exclaimed in equal parts panic and alarm. I was a city kid after all and I just assumed that wild packs of roaming puppies would invade and set up shop in your home if you let them. From that point, Kooler was an ever present component of my life. Beginning of the day? Kooler would sit patiently with my sister and I as we waited for the bus, he'd sense the bus coming far before we did. He'd stretch it out in that glorious dog shuddering stretch and trot to the top of the hill next to our house, lord of all he surveyed. End of the day? Kooler would wait in the driveway for us to return, then he'd yip and yap his way to the front door as he told us about what he'd done that day. Kooler is what I think the Mafia must be like with their families. The family knows something is going on, Dad is away on "business" for most of the day, there are people who are always around, but you have no idea what anyone actually does. There were brief glimpses of Kooler's alternate dog pack leader life. A dog that no one had ever seen before would suddenly show up (we lived in the middle of a forest) and subserviently shuffle up to Kooler, he'd look at us, look back at the dog and almost imperceptibly nod his head in a direction. Random dog would take the cue, put its tail down, and head off in the trees.
If Ollie was the athletic, friend to all species Jedi and Kooler was the charismatic leader of free dogs everywhere, Blazer was...different.
We aren't sure that Blazer was actually a dog. I'm not sure that Blazer thought she was a dog either. If aliens decided to beam down and take the shape of mankind's loyal friend in order to gather intelligence on us, Blazer was part of that initial spy operation. She was unabashedly a Golden Retriever, sometimes playing the part of being a Golden Retriever so well in fact, that it was clear she had comprehensive data files on how to Golden Retriever most effectively. Happy go lucky demeanor? Check. Lolling tongue? Check. Friendly greeter to all who came to our door? Check. If Kooler had been Liam Neeson from Taken in his fierce and confident protectiveness of our family, Blazer was that really friendly Southern mother with feathered hair, that greets everyone with a booming and friendly, "How y'all doing? Would you like some pie?". There were moments that Blazer would be licking something or the other and we'd make direct eye contact. We'd stare at each other unblinking, two different species of Earthly cohabitants whose ancestors have worked together for countless millennia and a silent question would fill the void between us, "Am I dogging correctly right now? Is this the appropriate level of dogness?". Then a fly would zip by, or something on her butt would interest her more and that cross species connection would be broken until the next time.
Blazer in the wilderness was a wonder to watch in action. As we grew up surrounded by the forest, and she was ostensibly the proud descendant of wolves, you'd think that she would move silently, almost cunningly, through the trees. Well you'd be wrong to think that. Blazer slammed through the underbrush, doing her best to catch every bramble and branch on the way. Blazer's favorite activity was to find a wooded hill and charge down full speed, tongue streaming out of her mouth, tripping, rolling, somersaulting, bouncing off shrubs all while making as much noise as possible. I'd come up to her as she did that dog roll/flip thing they do when they're trying to stand up and gather themselves, she'd look at me, smile her Blazer smile and crash off into the next obstacle. When we walked with Kooler and Ollie, we'd often see deer, turkeys and other woodland creatures. With Blazer the word was passed along all around us, "There's a dog-like being trying her best to dog right now, watch out friends!".
I say all this because recently my younger sister and I were trying to come up with the best idea/image/belief system to get(and keep) our creativity flowing. How do you keep going? What happens when you don't know what to do next? What do you do when you're scared? We both decided that we need to be the best version of Blazer possible. We need to charge down that hill, stumbling, rumbling, crashing into obstacles, slamming through uncertainty, getting back up after the inevitable falls. Those walks, expeditions, hikes and moments with my dogs growing up have taught me more than much of my formal education. My dog/alien superspy was, and still is, my teacher. I'll follow her lead, I'll follow her down the hill, through it all, because she taught me you can always get back up again.
Happy Friday friends.