Some of It, You Learn the Hard Way
On July 28, 2015, I spent a four-hour drive home from North Florida looking at a puppy who looked straight back at me. Four years later I still look straight at Boo and she looks straight back. I often remarked she does this because she doesn’t have the sense not to. When people asked me what I meant I struggled for a suitable explanation. Now when questioned I no longer offer an explanation.
I was much muchier then and have since lost so much of my muchness. Everything we got, we got the hard way.
Some of It, You Read on a Page
The Boo Box is where we keep our Boo-Think pages. It is a box of paradoxical design – it knows no edges, flaps or corners, it has no top or bottom – it is a box void of quantum.
Boo-Think began on the Internet seeking solutions to erratic behaviors Boo began to present. I didn’t have a “term” to define them – only my description. I sorted through each find and bit-by-bit, the collection of our pages gave way to a road map conventional dog training failed to GPS.
Four months after Boo arrived our road map led to a Doorknob at a local dog club who sent us out along our route to tumble down the dirt road Rabbit Hole to Draxen Farms. Soon thereafter, we began to believe six impossible things before breakfast on a daily basis. And so the road map of Raising Boo lifted from the pages of the Boo Box to three-dimensional Boo Life.
Some of It, Comes From Heartbreak
The road map has taken us out for quite a drive and for the most part at home and out and about in public, Boo and I look back over our shoulders at hilltops we have traversed and conquered. It’s quite the crowded vista back there – so many hilltops that some I absolutely forgot about until a moment sparks my memory.
Boo and I have reached places along the map at the Farm where we had the peaks of mountains in sight during our ascent. For one reason or another, our grapples don’t seem to take a firm hold there – yet.
Whether it’s a hill or mountain that finds us tumbling, my falls of failure hurt my heart for Boo – though when I look straight at her and she looks straight back – I know we are better for trying a new route.
you’re gonna get through it, when she starts to twist be more like Chris – pull your hat down tight and just LeDoux it. When that whistle blows and that crowd explodes and them pickup men are at your side – they tell you good ride cowboy, good ride.” – Garth Brooks
Most of It, Comes With Age
I told Boo recently on her fourth Gotcha Anniversary day that we’re like a big old wheel of real good cheese. Handled properly and given more time, we will continue to ripen. Our map knows no finite destination so we move forward growing older, tastier and sharper together. Break out the crackers, Girlfriend, we’re going for a drive.
And None of It, Ever Comes Easy
Not much is easy when it comes to Boo, though I do know we’ve reached a milestone when I see the marker alongside the road of our route.
Thanks to a key gifted to us by our good friend Kathy, I solidly know that Boo’s uniqueness is not my imagination. An hour and a half on the phone with Kathy’s good friend Des stuck so many keys in so many doors my rattled brain felt as if an earthquake grabbed it with two hands and shook it – hard.
After my conversation with Des, I walked to the porch and looked at my husband. I know I appeared to him as a small, stunned animal in the road trying to make a decision whether to run or not run from the hypnotic point of no return where oncoming rubber was meeting road.
“Good news,” I said, weakly fluttering the 12 pages of scrawled notes from my conversation with Des in one hand and rubbing my face with the other. “Four years. And now I know I’m not crazy. It’s a real good feeling to know.”
Des gifted me needles, padding and thread to begin to sew a quilt from the patchwork we earned and crafted along our route.
Some squares are abrasive while others are soft though they are all good and true and each one is all us.
Since the conversation with Des, I hold the quilt up from time to time to admire the progress of the pattern as I trace our route along the squares. I find that I smile more now. I marvel at the beauty of the fluidity of the gestalt of the design.
A Bunch of It, You Maybe Can’t Use
Filtration, application and elimination through honest – honest being the cruel operative word – observation and consideration can also be called life. You’ll never, ever, know it all.
Sharing good information gained from experience you couldn’t effectively use for your own situation – also known as failure – may provide a spark that ignites a new concept or realization for someone else.
I Know I Don’t Probably Know What I Think I Do
Upon hearing tales of the mystique of Boo Life a lot of people out there in the “dog world” can barely contain themselves for me to finish a sentence to inform me as to why I indeed, do not know what I think I do. So now, I don’t say a lot.
There are mostly true, good “dog people” folks who do listen – and I mean really listen – and really think about our conversation and offer invaluable information. I gratefully and carefully file their thoughts and observations in the Boo-Box.
My filtration system upped its game since talking to Des and picking up our needle and golden thread. Thanks to him, we have begun to sew a little Teflon into our quilt on certain patches.
Boo Life, much like the Boo-Box, lacks a certain firm quantum – it is a paradoxical, shifting evolution that requires an open mind. Sometimes I poke myself with the needle and draw a little blood – other times – I can stitch one square to another like an old pro.
Though there is much I don’t know – I do know that there are a lot of people out there who would have destroyed Boo – including many who are a self-prescribed crucial quotient of the “dog people” world equation.
But There’s Somethin’ to…Some of It…
If I had chosen to give up on Boo or handled her improperly I would have taken the by-pass on our route and missed the God-given opportunity of a lifetime to learn to sew this quilt. I also would have missed the opportunity to simply become a better person.
When I look straight at Boo and she looks straight back, I see hard times, pages and pages of thought, tear-down heartbreaks over four years of nothing coming easy and endless trial and error, work and effort. When I look deeper past all of that – I see love.
There’s something to an imperfect person and an imperfect dog, that when stitched together, become perfect.
Lyrics: Some of It – Eric Church