of dogs and roses

Practiced in the “look”

Without a dog, you’d never have anyone demonstrate how important it is to stop every day and smell the roses… and then lift your leg on them. W. Bruce Cameron

The old saying about either having time, or having money but not both, has played out for all the companion dogs and me over the years.   And when fortunate to have both, during my recuperation, some four decades have passed between Senorita, the long-hair German Shepherd, then Happy, Sydney, Nubby, and now Dexter and Comet.  In all that time, each of these companions have encouraged me to move past the temporary obstacles and obsessions and “smell the roses”.  Then pee on them (metaphorically speaking).

There are flowers that glow, thriving among the thorn bushes.  While surgery and recuperation, may not be the pause that writers, poets, and stressed-out technical workers were considering,  these thorns are allowing me to be more appreciative.   For two consecutive Saturdays, my dear friends have taken the boys out for the prayer walk in my place.   Friends have looked in on me since I first went to the hospital.  And my neighbor, John, has come by to care for roses that I added to the front walk a few weeks ago.  I  am beginning to think, on the cusp of retiring from the 60-hour work/commute-week anyway, that it could be time for time.  All forty-plus years of scurrying past “the roses” to work.  Maybe a comfortably frugal life, a healthy body, a loving wife, good friends, good neighbors and happy dogs are sufficient.