Rescue Journal

i think to actually do this kind of rescue..

Carol  ·  Jan. 2, 2012

you need to be able to blow off occasional smoke rings.
and....

you have to be a little bit crazy...but not too, too crazy or you'd really mess it up. i think you need to be pretty aware of personal long and short comings and you need to be able to see the real beauty and sometimes not so nice things clearly, minus the rose or dark colored glasses.

you need to keep pain, and fear and outright paranoia at bay and anger or irritation on a very short and well controlled leash and be able to see the lost and bewildered and clueless humans and not monsters behind every needy animal everywhere.

and most of all you need to know where your own buttons are and make yourself turn them off when they get pushed.

and i struggle with this.

i have to chuckle sometimes when someone pushes the wrong button on the very worst of days..if they even had a clue to the firestorm i am holding the lid on, they would run fast and far away.

but i have my tricks for avoiding most major emotional meltdowns (i am human and entitled to a few...) and it pretty much always involves innocent dogs and some kind of food. last night it was a box of cheese crackers and fergus who righted my off balanced mood.

last night i am laying with the bed buddies watching that new comedy penguin movie with a box of cheese crackers in my hand. i know many folks who do sports and shows with their dogs and feel a great sense of joy and pride when their hard work pays off and the dog does well. i get that same sense of pride and joy when my dogs are respectful and well behaved when a box of cheese crackers are well within reach.

so i have this perfectly placed arc of calmly waiting dogs spread across my bed..each watching and waiting and respectful of the hopefully soon incoming cracker god hand. they take each offerring with reverence and they watch as their companions get theirs, knowing that once thru the original arc, the hand will come back again.

except fergus, cuz he can't see as well. one eye is gone and the other is foggy so he can't see the god's cracker hand as easily and where it is in relation to him in the arc. but fergus is good, and fergus is well behaved when crackers are arcing across his bed buddy world. he just carefully and respectfully steps over the waiting dog arc and parks his butt within an inch of the right hand holding the cracker box. and every so often he leans the tiniest bit forward and gives the box a single and fleeting gentle lick..just to remind the box (in case the box doesn't see very well like fergus)..that fergus is respectfully sitting there.

i don't need to let loose the grieving or angry or hurt or frightened dragons inside me to rampage around flaming my world...my dragons just need a little blind and innocent cocker who respectfully wants a cracker to make them fall back asleep and contentedly purr with wifts of the occasion smoke rings, spiralling less destructively thru the night rescue air..

Comments

Barbara DeMott

Every morning I do the three cookie hand out to three large dogs who each lie down with front paws on my legs as I sit cross legged on the kitchen floor. The benefit is that I get to stroke their silky ears while they eat their cookies.

Ashley

Can you use 10 bags of 5000ml fluids? Its perfectly good, just a wrong order at work!

Brenda

I loved that story too, Carol - especially since I have 2 cockers, who probably would have tried to do more than lick the box!