The Dish by Darcy

Oh, I’m in a good mood today. I love to dream. My dreams are like full color epic movies and last night I had a great one. I had this very strange dream about a heavy gun powder blue early morning sky filled with an arsenal of planes and sky high transformer robots with laser eye beams hidden behind laser visors, automobiles driving through mid air and people walking without the ground under their feet. I woke up before I could decide if the Earth was under attack from another world or if it really was a Dodge promotion as a woman in the dream tried to make me believe. It was an amazingly big dream. The biggest part of the dream was that our children and our dogs did not desert us. The children stayed calm. The dogs’ protective wits were heightened, they did not make noise or bark to draw attention and they stayed with us. The one silly moment of the dream was when a transformer robot vaporized DC the cat and she didn’t seem to mind. I probably threw that unconsciously into the dream because DC has been choosing to lay on Kent’s side of the bed lately instead of cuddling with me. A little late night jealousy perhaps?

After I got up and started reading the morning news, I had to chuckle when I saw an article today about dogs in our lives and why they’re here. The article questioned why dogs are so important to us and why we treat them like family, why do we love them and grieve so hard when they die. It talked about the “trend” today toward human food for dogs as if we’d never fed them anything but commercially bagged dog foods in the whole history of dogs. Do we love our dogs more than people was the prominent question.

Anybody who has ever had a relationship with a dog knows why we choose them as companions. They choose us back. They accept us unconditionally, they love us back. Everybody wants to be accepted and acceptance from a dog is complete acceptance. It feels good. It feels right and comfortable and stable and it makes us want to care for them. When we care for something, that makes us love it even more.

When a beloved dog dies, the grief is the same of losing a human child. It’s overwhelmingly a loss and heart break.

The “trend” toward human food was an interesting way to put it. Our grandparents and some of us, like me, always fed our dogs scraps or the foods from our human table although it was raw for the dogs and we cooked our food. Those dogs lived long and healthy lives. It wasn’t until I moved to town from the country and began to feed them low quality commercial food available at my vet’s office and the grocery store that my dogs started having health issues, gas, nasty coats, and really bad breath. The food story is not a new story and I won’t spend any time on it today except to say, whole and simple foods are best for everybody, even the dogs. If it’s a “trend”, it’s just trending back to the way it used to be to whole, simple human grade foods.

I, for one, love my dogs as much as I love my people. Would I choose a person over my dog if there was a need to? Yes, I know I would but I wouldn’t be happy about it. If it was as bad as I have to feed the kids before I feed the dog, I’d feed the kids. But I wouldn’t feed the dog to the kids no matter how hungry they were any more than I would feed one of the kids to another kid. That seems like an odd thing to say maybe, but there is a train of thought that dogs should not be as high up the food chain, as it were, as people. I beg to differ and I do. My dogs are right up there with me. I would choose to skip a meal to feed my dogs and my kids. Of course I can say that now, my kids are grown and doing great out their on their own. My dogs still need me every day.

It’s come up at home that we should be thinking about getting another dog. You know Kari, our Golden Retriever, died at almost eighteen a long time ago and our Bruno, Belgian Shepherd, was almost fourteen when he passed away a few years ago. Of course, when we do get another dog, it will be a rescue. There are so many in rescue right now and we do have room for another one. When do we need to get another dog? Or should we yet? Would it be good for the two dogs still at home with us? Are we ready to add another fifteen years to the caring of a younger dog? Should we get an old dog? Those are questions we’ve been rolling around at our house. We know it will be a rescued dog when it happens but is it really time for another one now? My best guess is that the dog who needs us will come to us when it’s time, just like it’s always been, and we’ll welcome it with open arms to live and love in our house.

I love my people and I love my dogs and now I know that even under a threat of invasion of the Earth or by a big automobile company, I can count on all of them. Happy Spring, Everybody. It’s a good day.

Darcie

Let us present SitStay’s Dog Rescue Directory at http://rescue.sitstay.com. It’s our revamped rescue site. Years ago we had a great rescue site that got too busy, we had to take it down and redo it so it could handle the rescue traffic. We are very pleased to have it back, up and working. SitStay donates a portion of our profit every month to rescue. Please tell your favorite dog rescues to sign up and maybe they’ll get a donation from us. Please tell everyone you know, let’s give rescue all the help we can. Go to http://rescue.sitstay.com.