Sometimes, there just isn’t enough room to think about much else. But, every once in a while, we get a glimpse . . . we hear a whisper . . . and we remember: There is a bigger world out there, and a greater purpose for everything in it, than we know.
It can take the breath of a puppy . . . the song of a sparrow . . . the flight of white swans coming home . . . to remind us. But, sometimes — no matter how bleak and hopeless life may seem — we feel ourselves lifting up in our hearts. We remember what it was like to be young. We are ageless, and we are beautiful like dogs reflecting a primitive side of ourselves in a world of deepening waters growing ever more difficult to navigate.
It had been months since he died, the dog with eyes so dark and searching that no one who ever saw him went away feeling quite the same. What was he trying to find, they wondered. What was he missing?
Those who knew him didn’t have to ask. They didn’t have to ask why the dog paced his kennel and ignored the helpers who fed and watched him. They didn’t have to ask why he stretched his neck and raised his head as high as it could reach, just to peek around the corner and look at the big house. They didn’t have to ask, because they knew. He was waiting for the one he loved. He was waiting for his master.
In time, his master found mates for the champion who was so special to him. He found daughters from bloodlines in distant places, some of them champions, too. But, it was the little one who wasn’t quite perfect who caught his attention and held it.
At first, she wasn’t much to look at. All together, it would take two, almost three, years to restore her health and gain her trust. It would take the hands of his master to calm her, and the sound of his voice to soothe her soul. But, in time, little by little, she gave herself over to life in the small kennel. In lush pastures of clover she played, and from cool streams tinted with watercress, she drank happiness.
In the spring, they mated. The daughter of noble heritage joined forces with the champion who, by now, had seen twelve winters and would see no more. As he left this world, the voice he loved so much, said: “Thank you, my friend.” As tears fell over him and familiar hands caressed him for the last time, his master cried: “Come back to me . . . Come back to me!”
Winter seemed colder then. Nights seemed blacker. Colds and flu and ice . . . When would it end? It would end when it wanted to, not when we said it should. That’s how it is in Nature.
The young dog moved slower now. She found it difficult, trotting to the barn. She longed for walks with her master. But, her master wasn’t taking her for hikes in the woods anymore, where she loved to jump over logs and chase rabbits. What had changed? Wasn’t she the same as she had always been? Somehow, she knew she wasn’t the same. Even without a mirror, she sensed it. But, who said mirrors can only be made of glass?
She was restless that night.
As the hours went by, a force inside her built in its power. Rolling, pushing, bubbling its way up from the primitive depths of her being, it took over her legs, her belly and burst forth in wave after wave of mindless, wet fury.
Then, just as it had begun, it came to rest. Lying there in the fresh straw, she breathed deeply, gazing at the tiny puppies by her side, knowing her life had changed in ways she would not fully understand. Into the night, she studied these reflections of herself, of her mother, of her grandmothers . . . into the mirror of the night, they went . . . and she was no longer alone.