Good Bye Big Foot

Big Foot, my three year old female Doberman is dying. It’s been a month since her cobra bite and while she seemed to be making progress in her recovery initially…of late she is seems to be showing signs of breathlessness and lethargy. These past few days her condition has deteriorated markedly and I suspect the venom has caused irreparable and fatal organ damage.

This morning as I prepared to feed her by tube and syringe again, she pushed my hand away as if to tell me, ‘no more master…it’s time.’ Dogs can intuit when their time nears…they know better than us humans.

It’s very heart wrenching to lose a dog. I don’t think ordinary people back in the home front can understand how close the bond can be between farmer and dog. It is impossible to recount and I will not even try. When one considers how a whole week and even a month can go right by without seeing another human being….these are really one’s only constant companions – dogs are a sort of surrogate family and constant companionship….so when one of them goes, it cuts deep into the marrow and the pain is so very sharp.

I did not go to work today. I could not. You could say I loss the will to do so. Instead, I just sat beside big foot with her head on my lap humming to her….travel well, my love. Papa farmer loves you so very much with all his heart.

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‘Living doesn’t get easier with practice. No it doesn’t. I admit, it should, but it doesn’t work that way – as when one elects to live and not just exist or go thru life with an acquired sense of casual indifference. Then I guess at some point one has to make a commitment to love. And when one decides to cross that mythical line.

There’s always the possibility of getting hurt.

Sometimes, I say to myself if it’s going to be so bloody painful all the time, why even bother. Maybe I should hold back some…keep a distance…save a bit of myself so that I don’t have to go thru the grief of loss.

But to go thru life without love and fearing intimacy is to live only partially and not completely and totally.

And that is exactly what most people prefer to do without them even consciously realizing it – they much prefer to hold back, so that if something bad happens, their life will just go right on without hardly a flutter.

They don’t want to know more about you. Not because they aren’t interested. But they’re just afraid if they allow you into their life, then there’s always the possibility you may turn it upside down should things take a wrong turn…..they are content to say, this is the broad line that separates me from you! Your world is there, mine is over here! That’s how most people prefer to go thru the rest of life.

As when one makes a decision to live, then love follows quite naturally and there’s always the risk it may not end well.

But I have no regrets as along the way, we had so many beautiful moments of unalloyed laughter, joy and special moments together that I would never trade in by living a compromise life – which could never ever come about had there been anything resembling restraint, fear and a morbid aversion to emotional pain. Granted, living certainly isn’t like old seasoned leather, it doesn’t get easier or more mellow with age or the repeating, it will always be fraught with risk and pain, but I much prefer that way, as I want to feel the wind against my cheeks when I run as fast as my legs can take me.’