I love my dog. I know that’s about as interesting as one of those stick family decals on the rear window of a mini-van. It even sounds like something you might read on a bumper sticker.
This isn’t about bumper stickers though, but rather bumping along in life with worries that ping-pong around like reckless cars weaving through traffic.
Gus, is a faux-lab we adopted when he was a year old. I call him a faux-lab because he doesn’t like the water. This baffles me because his breed seems almost amphibious. He had been at the shelter for six weeks before we adopted him. I am not sure if that had anything to do with the sign on his kennel which read, “I eat blankets.” Since I like to hide underneath blankets when the world feels too wonky, I figured our shared affinity for bed covers might make a good match.
When we brought him home from the shelter, Gus was as shiny and black as a baby grand piano with dazzling white teeth as his keys. He is nine-years-old now. His muzzle is gray and his teeth aren’t quite as glossy. He doesn’t eat blankets, but he’s always there when I need one. The longer I have him the more grateful I am for his unconditional love and the uncanny way he completes our family.
The more I realize how dear this dog is, the more I worry about my next dog. I lament that I won’t be able to find another dog as perfect, that I won’t even like any other dogs, that when the dog I have dies I am going to adopt 10 more cats to add to the two I have and just call my life a dog-gone disaster with a dozen litter boxes to clean.
Breaking from my catastrophic thinking I wonder why I can’t just enjoy right now. Why am I wasting time trying to write a future when the only thing I can author is my present? Why is it that the more I know what I have the more afraid I am to lose it? Why can’t I be like the Beatles and just let it be?
Let it be.