The Miracle That Is Dakota

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(Authors Note)

(If you have not read the sidebar yet on this blog than you may or may not know that I am a Christian, a Yay God person, and sometimes God becomes the topic of my blog.  Well, He is always in the blog, just not always stated.  If, for any reason, that offends you, than skip this entry for I am praising God to the hilt!)

I feel I have been granted a miracle, well, if miracle is too strong a word, then maybe simply an intervention that seems God arranged.  My last blog was about Tucker, really the best of the three Brittany’s I had owned so far.  When he died I was nothing less than bereft.  Brittany’s are not terribly prevalent here in TX and as I searched Craig’s list for a suitable substitute breed, I just couldn’t find any.  Mostly I found way too small dogs for sale and way to big dogs for sale but none that were just the right size as a Brittany is.

There is, however, a Brittany Rescue in Texas that is based out of Dallas.  When I was in ME and using my nights to search on line, I came across it and was drawn to this one female named Dakota who was 7 and probably just the perfect age for me.  I am now 66 and although my husband thought I should get a puppy so I could train it, I just knew that would be unfair to the dog.  Two of my Brit’s lived to 14 which would put me at 80 when they were old and I just couldn’t be sure I would have 14 more ambulatory years for these high energy dogs.  7 though, the perfect middle age where, please God, I could keep up with till I was 73.  That seemed more reasonable. 

The long shot of this was that all of Texas is looking at this site and I would not be the only one interested in her.  Plus, you have heard my laments through the years of my old car, just turned 16, and I thought, I don’t even have a worthy enough car to make the 500 mile round trip To Dallas to get her.  But I filled out an application anyways.

Just two days after my return from Christmas, I got a call from BRIT (Brittany Rescue of Texas) with someone wanting to come over to see my house and yard and see if I would be a suitable owner.  I thought, Wow, you must be one dedicated volunteer to drive 500 miles just to see my yard!  But, and here is where I feel my miracle began, she was calling from Schertz, a town some 20 miles from here! Incredibly, a family there was fostering the dog I most wanted practically in my neighborhood I instantly went into my “Thank You Jesus!” mode!

They brought her over the next Tuesday and it was love at first sight! I had once said I would never get another Brittany here, no beaches or woods to run in, and all those hot days to suffer through.  But, as my friends kept pointing out, she was a Texas dog, she has no idea of a cooler life, and she had been kept in a crate 8 hours a day while the people went to work which will drive a Brittany, a high energy dog, to the point of madness.  So, my 2 acres and my proclivity to take my dogs everywhere with me when it is cool enough, would seem like heaven to her.  I am sooo glad I listened to them for that is just what has happened.  She races around the yard, as happy as Tuck had been racing over the dunes, and my mission has been, to borrow a verse from the Bible, “restore to her the years the locusts had eaten”. (Joel 2:25)

My daughter visited from Baltimore last week so we were out seeing the sites.  In her first week with us she got to go to the Missions of San Antonio , a world heritage site, take trail walks all around the Longhorn caverns, swim in Inks Lake and hike the trails and scramble the rocks of Pedernales State Park.  They told me she had not been in a car much and it seemed to make her nervous, but I knew, or I hoped, that like all Brittany’s, the chance to travel and smell new smells would be a gift and so for the 10 days I have had her she has accompanied me almost everywhere and done fine.

 

Do they sense they have had a huge change of fortune? I am not sure, but she is the most loving of dogs.  I have never had a female so maybe, as loving as my males were, the females are even more so.  She is amazingly smart, learning commands in one or two tries!  If you have a food driven dog, training is so much easier and that she is.  And she, like most Brittany’s, loves to please her owner.  In one just 10 days she has learned; the down stay, how to find hidden Kong’s, watch me, know that I enter and exit doors before her etc.  I keep saying this female is running rings around my males, but to be fair, they were trained as puppies so, and of course it took longer. 

And the cherry on top is that she is 10 lbs. lighter than my males and that translates to less wrenching of the arm from the shoulder.  Plus, they have come up with a new halter style that has the lead attach at the chest and not the back or the neck so they are led more like a horse in a halter and it works great.  It works so well that I am going to try keeping her with me on nature hikes at Cibolo.  A parent can be in charge of her while I teach the kids, but they can see how true it is that I am not the real naturalist but that it is my dog that sniffs out where the action has been overnight.  Plus it will be a great ad for rescuing dogs. I can’t wait! 

So, here’s where my God part fits in.  I take Jesus at his word.  He promises not only to be with me always but to go before me, to know what my hearts desire before I can even speak it.  While I hesitated filling out the application I feel it was God that kept prompting me to do so.  And the realization that as Tuck was dying Dakota was being rescued, plus, out of all this overly large state of Texas she would be within 20 miles of me and that the other man who wanted her ended up needing surgery and had to pass, well, from where my heart sits, this was God answering prayer.

Not only my prayers but all the children in the Faith formation classes had been praying for me.  They knew I was sad and now how wonderful, how faith affirming to be able to go to each and every class (I am a roving teacher that goes to all classes K-5 on Sundays and Weds} to tell them the story of Dakota and thank them for being part of this amazing God intervention was a God commercial in itself.  As this blog is, as my telling anybody who comes with 10 feet of me when I am with her, what a miracle she is!  In my book our lives should be a commercial for Christ and I always promise him, in all things, I will run his name in the credits, and so I do.  And so I will. 

By the way, the name Dakota comes from the Sioux language and it means, “friend, ally”.  I had given my daughter a magnet that said “Who Rescued Who?” In this case, the rescue goes both ways. Life is good again, there is the click of toenails on wood floors again, a reason to hike, to throw balls  and to have other friends over to my own “dog park” and  best of all when I make the long trek to Maine again this summer, I won’t be traveling alone.   Makes me want to sing the Doxology!

Praise God from who all blessings flow

Praise him all creatures here below

Praise him above you heavenly hosts

Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.”

AMEN, AMEN AMEN!!!!

AN ODE TO TUCKER- MY BEST BRITTANY EVER

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Anyone who knows me knows I am always saying, there are only two sources of unconditional love, G O D and D O G.  All right, they aren’t the only sources but they are the most guaranteed ones.  God promises that nothing can separate us from his love, nothing, and dogs, most dogs, will greet you with a wagging tail even if they don’t know you.  Well, in November, I lost one of those sources, the one with the wagging tail.  Tuck.

 And if any of you follow this blog, you might have wondered what cliff I dropped off of, for the end of the year saw no entries.  If I recall correctly, I last left you on the cusp of my daughter’s wedding, which went off splendidly even though Hurricane Matthew was barreling down on us.  Torrential rains for the rehearsal (it was an outdoor wedding) but brilliant blue skies, with wild, cold, wind for the event itself.  We all had goose bumps through the outdoor ceremony for more reasons than just being moved by it all. But I digress.

Tuck, was the third in a line of Brittany’s we have owned. It is a breed that I stumbled on when we lived in IL.  I had been lobbying for a dog for about 8 yrs. to no avail.  When my second daughter was about 18 months she would hold out her arms saying “doggie, doggie, doggie!” every time one passed.  So when I finally convinced my husband to look at puppies, nothing large, maybe a dachshund, upon seeing them he said, “If you’re going to get a rat, get a dog”.  OK! Instantly I was researching for breeds that were good with children, then pouring over the classifieds and found a farm nearby selling Brittany Spaniels. By nightfall we had our first dog, Charlie (Pat, I thought this was about Tucker) Well, yes but this is how it all got started.  Charlie deserves his own Ode because he was such a great dog that we have stuck with Brittany’s ever since.

But of all of them, Tuck was the best.  Loving and kind as Charlie, not an Alpha like my second one Tyler and the best at, more or less, knowing where I was on any hike and checking back with me, in a reasonable amount of time.  Brittany’s are bred to flush game so they instinctively want to be ahead of you.  Both Tyler and Tuck were lucky enough to be raised on Cape Cod, a place that has set such a high bar for fabulous places to hike off leash that I daily lament not being there. 

 It was Tuck that made my trip to New England possible the summer after fracturing my leg.  Without him I could have only gone as far as my crutches would carry me, but I hitched his harness up to a patched together wheelchair and off we went. He was my one man Iditarod pulling me along beach boardwalks, Harbor Place in Baltimore, rail trails on the Cape etc. It was the most fabulous 2 months of travel and I could never have done it without him.  Thank you Tuck.

 It was Tuck that was the real naturalist in the family.  I always took him on trails prior to taking people so he could alert me to things I would have missed.  Here in Texas there are multiple armadillo homes but he would let me know by his enthusiasm, which ones were occupied and which were not. I always gave him the credit too.  “My dog got really excited about something coming up on the trail, can you find what it was?”

He died right at the end of the teaching season, and I couldn’t imagine how I would go there without him.  I couldn’t imagine a lot of things without him.  My trips to New England in the summer, hiking our favorite beaches and marshes together, playing with the grandchildren who loved him too, it just was all so sad.  BUT I never was parted from that primary source of unconditional love and God who always goes before me, has amazingly lined up another Brittany.  A rescue, a female named Dakota that I shall get tomorrow!! How this amazingly came to pass is a story for another day.

But for now, we salute you Tucker, my soul mate, my kindred spirit. I love that God says he prepares a room for us and I have already asked him that in that room he makes room for Tucker and Charlie and maybe even alpha Tyler. No dog takes the place of another, but they simply expand the list of dogs we have loved.

I end with a poem my 8-year-old grand daughter gave me for Christmas, the best gift ever.

 And so do we all.