“In the end, only three things matter:

How much you loved,

How gently you lived,

How gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.”

--From “Buddha Quotes.”

Greetings Dear Ones,

Apple season has arrived, with its tart days, crisp nights, and round, rosy-glowing afternoons. We had our very first apple dumplings of this harvest a few nights ago. They came out of the oven like golden, age-stained vintage pillow cases stuffed with cinnamon and memories.

Beneath the biggest, oldest apple tree on the property, the earth still freshly churned, is a small grave I now visit often as I work in the orchard. Not very long ago, we stood and cried as one of the Jack Russells, “Sport” took his final resting place beneath this ancient tree on the ridge overlooking the barn. I sometimes visit this place in the twilight, as I finish the evening chores, and think of him, curled up beneath the dirt, instead of in his basket by the wood stove. I marvel about how the energies of “him” will dissolve, dissipate until all that will remain is Story. Again and again, I thank him for coming and being a part of our lives. You could not dig a hole big enough to contain all the stories about this dog. He was both cur and mudgeon (high dudgeon) through and through. What he lacked in size or brains he more than made up for in Moxy.

I miss him. I appreciate moxy. It seems pretty thin on the ground these days, except in those who choose to wear neon yoga pants as formal wear. I really wish sensible moderates had more of it.

Why do we love our dogs so much? My friend Nora says they are the psychic love portals through which Unconditional Love leaks in from a much better world. (She says it way more eloquently than that; I’m paraphrasing.) In a world where politics are ugly, faith is struggling, daily life is stressful, and the economy uncertain, what could be better than having a three-legged imp-with-attitude taking a dump on your carpet, shedding all over your bed, and then grinningly expecting his supper? I guess we succumb to anything to feel Love. And no matter how you are feeling, these little dogs gonna love you and demand love in return. No matter what.

Most of the people who privately admit to me that they really don’t know what love is also admit that they have never owned a dog. They have never experienced being the sole focus of someone else’s blind trust and Acceptance. A veterinarian friend of mine says she always marvels that no matter how smelly, disheveled, disorganized or socially awkward the owners are, their dogs adore them. “They truly don’t care how nasty your toenails are or whether or not you have bad breath. They are God’s Angels here on earth. They are the one chance we have to experience Unconditional Love.”

In 8th grade, I remember a boy with red, puffy eyes asking our teacher if dogs went to Heaven.

“Of course not,” she retorted. “They have no souls; how could they go to Heaven?”

“How about hamsters?” quipped a cheeky gambler from the back of the room.

She scowled at him with more than her customary ferocity.

“NO animals go to Heaven,” she spat, surveying all would-be challengers with baleful contempt. We were silent as the boy with red eyes bent his head over his desk and leaked fresh tears onto his morning math facts.

Later, in Latin class, my eye was drawn to the irony that the word “animal” derives from the Latin anima or “soul.” But that teacher was not one with whom I felt comfortable sharing delightful ironies and absurdities. So I kept it to myself. I also kept it to myself that I believe EVERY living thing has a soul, and even some un-living things too—like tractors and quilts, vintage egg beaters and favorite linens passed down to us from our grandmothers. (There is no doubt in my mind that certain sewing machines know when it is Friday.) Even the elderly wooden desk, etched with years of boredom and graffiti, at which I sat, had a soul. I had to still my swinging feet to keep from kicking it while the ancient, pagan, feral, Imposter in me learned to keep her mouth shut.

It took me years to figure out what every dyslexic knows immediately: Dog is God spelled backwards.

Lifetimes later, when my children asked tearfully if our precious family dog, who had just been run over in our own driveway by a friend, was going to heaven, I said “I’m certain of it.”

“How do you know?” they asked.

“Because she herself was a little bit of Heaven that came to visit us. She has simply gone home. But don’t worry, the Love that sent her, will send us more love. It will just be in a different form, that’s all.”

“I don’t want another form,” sobbed my son in exasperation. “Why couldn’t we keep that form?? Those little paws that smelled like popcorn, those soft little ears, that licky tongue? I liked her muscles, her fur. I don’t want anything else.”

"Maybe because we are here on earth to experience so many varieties of love, in so many forms, over and over."
"Well that stinks," he insisted.

“My head hurts,” said my daughter tiredly. “Why does crying make your head hurt? I want to be done with this crying.”

“What hurts is all the love that feels unfinished. We need to love again and then the hurt will go away. Trust me on this. The more you love something, the more pain you feel when you have to let it go. But that pain is just a sign that you are seeking more love. Think about it, which is worse, feeling like this, or never having had her at all?” They agreed that not having her was worse. That night, they both fell asleep in my arms, having cried themselves out. I remember lying there, awake beneath their damp, sticky, over-heated bodies, afraid to move, in case I woke them and had to deal with more theology.

Theology and doctrinal piety debates are not my specialty, especially with a grieving eight and ten-year-old who poke at inconsistencies like law professors. What I believe with all my heart is that we are called to be Love in this world and we don’t do it nearly as well as our dogs. They don’t need formal “religiosity” to do Good. Finding our way in a troubled and hurting world takes unashamed goofiness and unblinking Courage. They have both in spades.

“How come dogs don’t have to go to church?” my daughter once asked.

“They ARE church,” I said. “They live joyfully with their whole hearts. They love purely. They serve God by doing their jobs and being themselves. They don’t need to learn how to do that like we humans do.”

Soon after, I saw two dogs offered for adoption on Craigslist. They had to come as a team, the ad said. We only needed one dog, but I was open to having two, especially since they were already so bonded to each other and could keep each other company when we were not home. I wrote the owner of the dogs a long letter explaining that we were a home-schooling family—we were home a lot, our kids were eight and ten, we had a wonderful yard, never watched T.V. and were extremely bonded to our animals. We had just lost our family dog and the kids were grieving hard.

She brought them over the next day. “We’ll love them forever,” I promised her.

“I just wanted to see an honest-to-god real family that had no TV,” she said. “It’s a miracle. To me, it’s a sign that he belongs with you. TV is a problem for him.”

“I think TV is a problem for everyone,” I laughed, not joking. “What’s his deal? Is he addicted to day-time soap operas? The cooking channel?”

“He just can’t be around TVs at all,” she said emphatically. “I’m serious. He’s got what they call ‘a high prey drive’ and every time he sees a flippin’ bird in a commercial, he goes nuts. You have no idea how many birds show up unexpectedly on TV programs these days. We have to get rid of him because we just bought ourselves one of them fancy new flat-screen TVs—paid beaucoup bucks for it—and this little bastard saw a bird on it and attacked it. It shattered everywhere, basically exploded… It was a mess. My partner said we can’t live like this. He has to go. We’re truck drivers, we wanted company in the trucks, but he’s just worn us out. He needs a different home. And little Stinky, she goes with him because she’s his best friend. They are partners in crime. He lets her eat all the mice they kill.”

A few months later, to our horror, the male dog, whom we called “Sport,” chased a car down our busy road and got hit. He survived, but lost the use of his left front leg. As far as we know, he never once grieved the loss of that leg. We tied it up in decorative bandanas and he hopped about in sepia tones like a grateful civil war veteran. The first few times he tried to use the bad leg, he fell over, then readjusted himself and got on with his Purpose and never looked back. Eventually, we had to have the dead limb amputated. He didn’t care. On three legs, he dedicated himself to the pursuit of tennis balls, sometimes tossing them downstairs so that he could then chase them himself. As the only member of the household who did NOT have Attention Deficit Disorder, he could drive us absolutely bonkers with his stubborn dedication to a self-imposed task, such as digging a hole in a plaster wall to get to a mouse. He was very much concerned with his own rights, privileges, and comforts and not so much those of other dogs, chickens or automobiles. He never forgave the Buick that hit him and took his leg, and ever after pursued all motor vehicles with the single-minded vengeance of Captain Ahab.

Sadly, Stinky was not with us very long. She was extremely food-focused and, for one of God’s Angel’s here on earth, surprisingly dedicated to petty crime and thievery. One day, we came home to find she had stolen a bag of shredded cheese off the kitchen table and eaten until she reached the other side of the rainbow with her mouth full of cheddar. The bag was big enough for her to get her head into and out of easily—she could have quit at any time—but she kept nibbling, licking, trying to reach the last little crumbs as gradual oxygen deprivation put her into a cheese coma. We found her dead, head in the bag, a greasy smile on her sweet wee face. Such are the perils of good Vermont cheddar.

Again, the kids were devastated. They tried to talk their father into a replacement dog. “You don’t need another dog,” he said, “One dog per family is enough.”

“But Sport is lonely now,” said my daughter plaintively. “And we will give some dog out there a really great home. We are so good with dogs!”

He looked at her quizzically. “Really? In the space of a year, one’s crippled and one’s dead! I don’t think this family is very good for dogs at all.”

But dogs were good for our family. We all knew it. We adopted not one, but two more. Given our track record, and the suicidal nature of Jack Russells, it seemed like we might need a few extra.

Through it all, Sport remained happy, hopeful, grateful, and only occasionally, murderous. One summer, he slaughtered every last Guinea hen I had. (I think I started with twenty-seven.) My daughter tried to host a small dinner party while I was out of town and the festivities were continuously interrupted by the need to stop and bury poultry.

More than once, he turned on his own colleagues and we would have to rush a snarling mass to the nearest sink to dunk them under running water until someone released that steel mouse trap of a jaw. Once, he had his throat ripped open by another dog and went into shock as we examined him on the kitchen table. Naturally, it was late in the evening and the nearest emergency clinic was over an hour away. He was not going to make it. My daughter, a certified EMT at the time, performed the necessary triage and stitched him back together with my best sewing silk and instructions supplied over cell-phone by my dear sister (and favorite veterinarian) in Pennsylvania. We got him the necessary antibiotics the next day and he healed beautifully.

He was nothing if not a survivor. As Mark Twain said “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” He survived that operation, as well as losing a leg, a fractured skull, and two bouts of colon cancer. (Sport, that is, not Mark Twain.) He even survived that time three of them shared a meal of six pounds of purloined butter, including plastic and packaging, and they all wound up with acute pancreatitis (which was not cute at all).

As W. Bruce Cameron put it, “When you adopt a dog, you have a lot of very good days and one very bad day.” The worst day ever. And that day finally came. There is hard honesty in knowing we have to love them up as best we can, storing their joys for colder winters to come, when we must sit by the fireside with only weightless stories on our laps.

The difference between dogs and us lesser mortals is that they live right up until the moment they die. Sport went to meet his Maker with a belly full of sausage and treats and passed peacefully in the arms of his beloved boy (now a grown man). He never complained; he never explained. Just one soulful look and he was gone. He lived his whole brave little life, never wasting one moment in being worried about what the next moment might bring or who was paying his bills.

When I consider the above poem about living gently and releasing gracefully, I realize what a terrible Buddhist he was. He lived with great passion, generating mayhem and violence, soiled carpets and lacerated squeaky toys wherever he roamed. He never released his grip on anything, whether it was meant for him or not. To my utter mortification, I once had to put him on the conveyor belt at the till at Tractor Supply so that the checkout clerk could scan him along with the plush toy he had shoplifted because he refused unclamp it from his mouth. (If you look up “tenacious” in certain dictionaries, you will find his portrait.) But, gosh…. He LOVED. And he was Loved. So maybe it all evens out in the end.

Seasons change, Life passes through us and around us and Love takes on new forms. Apples fall and so do us men, bitten or baked. New seeds are planted and we Forgive. We Learn. We grow. The Loving never goes away—It simply seeks us in new shapes and guises. Each precious time it finds us, the Truth of Love changes us indelibly. It transforms us animale from Fearful into Trusting beings and all species into kin. Thanks to Sport, we know that we will always love again, no matter what the cost. And the more we love, the more we become the beings we are meant to be: Authentic, as Love Itself imagined us at our start.

He may have been a terrible Buddhist, but he was a damn good Sport.

I’m trying to learn from him.

With sew much love,

Nancy