Playful Dog

Just after sunrise this morning, when I asked Mia if she'd like to go for a walk, she'd already heard my car keys jingle, and she knew what was up. What followed happens every time: She jumps, her gleaming eyes meeting mine in mid-air.  She runs to fetch a chew toy to carry with her to the car but drops it when the hatchback goes up -- sniffing around the car is so much fun.

We walk in places where other dogs aren't liable to be, because she still reacts with hysterical yelps, jumps, and twists, despite thousands of dollars with different dog trainers.  The perimeter of the Publix strip mall is usually safe, and an odiferous delight for a dog with a liking for rotting food and the bread trucks unloading.  A driver tossed her a tennis ball this week, which she gripped in her jaws and held up proudly as she pranced alongside me.  Once this week, at twenty paces, she tugged straight to a thicket of bushes and dove in to produce a chicken bone.

At home, she loves keep-away, and she loves tug-of-war.  But most of all, she loves to retire under the table or on the stair, in my view, to chew her prize.

Her malignant tumor was removed in April, but cells spread still.  She's getting tumor-shrinking drugs and chemo every three weeks.  She doesn't know she's sick, except when nothing comes of her squatting.

I'm enjoying every moment with her that I can.  I want to learn from her how to play with such abandon, how to trust, how to enjoy what comes, how to accept what I must.




Some other postings about dogs on THE WORD SANCTUARY.

• I've written about Mia before,in "Mia's Anima, a Dog's Soul" and, one of my most popular postings, "The Dogless Days of August," about the period when she was away being trained.
• I enjoyed a few years with young Mia together with her older playmate, Luis. "Trying to Catch My Old Dog Luis," was my effort to "capture" his physical presence in words, while he was still with me; a year later, I wrote, "Luis, Rest in Peace."
• "Dogs are Poetry" is a reflection on a spiritual dimension to dog ownership, focused on Dean Koontz 's faith-tinged memoir of his dog, Trixie, and a book by monks about the dogs they raise, supplemented by my own experiences with Luis and his mentor Bo. 
• About Bo, there's "Remembering Bo," and, from a year earlier, an essay that began, "This may be Bo's last winter."