I Chit You Not
Its odd to be excited about excrement. But truth is we’ve been tracking poo for more than a dozen days and today my old hairless dog finally had a solid stool. I consider it nothing short of a miracle, if not also the perfect opportunity for a shaggy dog story. You see, she must be approaching 15 years and she walks with stiff bones, her hearing is selective at best and I while I know her days are numbered I am always amazed by just how “well” she manages in her senior swan song. Take for instance this last dance with her demise, she picked up some kind of intestinal bug more than a week ago and to call it demon diarrhea would be an accurate description of the smell of death that came from her body. One night, she failed to wake my boy friend or I and she had an accident on the bedroom floor. Poor pup. The smell woke us immediately and we cleaned up the mess in no time, but it took us two hours+ to get rid of the order before we could go back to sleep. Mind you we have laminate flooring, there was no residual toxic waste in the room .. but that odor … the gasses of whatever parasite was eating her insides was unimaginable.
I know it doesn’t seem very Zen to talk about feces in graphic or even poetic prose. But after all, it IS the lotus flower that emerges from the mud, so it should not be so surprising that Truth can come to us even when we are knee deep in the muck of Life.
We really became worried when the younger pup, Dalai Lama picked up the crud and joined in the parade of poo that would be the bane of our existence for more than a sleepless week. We learned to catnap with one ear open, so we would hear the girls if they needed to be let out. They would prod us with a cold nose on our chin, or a thump on our head with the full force of the side of their face. WAKE UP!! I HAVE TO GO … NOW!!!! They would nudge. And we would get to our feet quickly and make our way downstairs in the dark to let them out the backdoor.
Of course, there are details about calls to our vet, the impossibility of obtaining stool samples from blades of grass covered in watery goo and even one day when all that left my poor pups body was blood. But of course the point isn’t to DWELL in the filfth when we are facing a dark moment. And my intent indeed is not to turn your stomach only to feel our pain. But rather to pause and praise when we are able to hold on to hope even when hopeless seems our only option. And to recognize that WE DO NOT KNOW what will happen next. Even if it seems like our world is coming to an END.
More than a week of bland rice, boiled chicken and even after abandoning ALL of that and letting the girls return to their dry kibble and the occasional table scrap – what could it hurt? The old girl was saying her long goodbye yes? – Even in the absence of modern medicine, or shaman medicine wheels … this morning I saw my old girl hobble out to the back yard, squat and poop as if nothing had ever been “wrong”.
Yes. It is True. The body CAN HEAL, as can the mind. But its not always pretty in the throes of the battle. We don’t ever know when the winds will turn or where we will end up when its over. All we ever has is THIS MOMENT …. and fortunately for all of US … THIS CHANGES and the NEXT THING comes to carry us on our way to the new adventure in our journey.
