March 23 - National Puppy Day

This is a re-post this from a blog or journal or something years ago, before the Nashville flood took our house, and when we had a special Great Pyrenees named Satchel who came to us back in Atlanta.  When I realized today was National Puppy Day, I could not resist sharing this once again.

They say dogs are colour blind.  But I just don’t know. I think our dog likes pink.

Yesterday I toted a mountain of household paraphernalia all at once in my hands as I all of a sudden (and it was, at that) found it necessary to take them from the den to the kitchen:  a teapot, a mystery book, a fireplace lighter, a tea cup, a tea saucer, an empty glass, a gardening book, and some lotion.   It had been an extremely busy day with my class prep and tutoring or I have simply been lacking in entertainment, because to be honest, I was quite amused and entertained by my own balancing act.  Ah, the gift of functional limbs.  I should be grateful!

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw my dog.

As I carried my bounty up the stairs I glanced casually through the picture window and I caught the canine in an interesting position.  He was on his back, under our tulip magnolia tree.  This is not an odd position for any dog, of course – what was unusual for him was that he wasn’t sleeping.  He was staring up at the pink blossoms and flicking his paws sporadically in the air, as if he were waving to the birds on the feeder.  Oh yes, he was probably flicking away wee insects that bother him so or very possibly responding to a reflex from lying on his back like that.  But I swear it looked like he was communicating with the aviation in our yard.  At any rate, the big guy was clearly enjoying himself.  He was staring up at one particular limb, looking up and down, and (I am not making this up) he was smiling. 

Immediately, my cargo became a burden.  A whiny little girl voice spoke inside me:  I want to lie down and stare up at birdies and pink pedals!  That bundle of supplies I skillfully carried in my hands was a great reflection of how much we (okay, I) try to juggle in daily life.  We try to do everything at once, gathering it all in our hot little fists and patting ourselves on the back for being so ambitious.  Oh, nothing is wrong with ambition, no.  I admire it and often try it!  But for me, at that particular moment in my yesterday, I was so blindingly busy with work that I thought it would actually be easier to get one hundred things to the kitchen at one time.  So I tried - and failed.  But the reason I failed is because I put down my bits and pieces of unimportant stuff and joined my dog on the grass, under the magnolia tree.  Here is what we saw:

“It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?”  Henry David Thoreau

“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, old time is still a flying:  And this same flower that smiles today, tomorrow will be dying.”  Robert Herrick (To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time, 1635)

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?”  Matthew 6:29-30 (Holy Bible)

Oh, I got my work done with time to spare.  Thanks to Satchel, with whom I shared a much needed refreshing moment under our tulip magnolia.