The Bodyguard
Just as I was finishing up my story about our yellow bird, still sitting outside on a zero gravity chair overlooking Karma’s Pond .. the redneck stood up quickly and raised his hand to point towards the back 40 (the unlandscaped area behind the main backyard) and as he did Bo took off running like she was in a race for her life. The next 10 seconds were a blur as he shouted, BO! NO!! and he quickly gathered up Bitzy in his arms so she wouldn’t run after our hairless wonder.
I should take a moment to properly introduce our newest hairless at it’s best member of our pack. Bodhicitta or was it Bodhisattva? Sometimes it’s Bodhi but mostly it’s just plain and simple Bo.
Bo reminds me of Bella because she has those slender regal lines of a Peruvian Inca Orchid which Bella was at least partly. Taco and Dalai were Xolo’s and each of them held my whole heart when they were part of our family. On Dal’s death I thought my decades of hairlessness preferences was over. The redneck very much wanted a furry baby to love and of course came Bitz who filled our hearts with more love than we could imagine. I never would have thought we would want for another dog.
Perhaps it was the new house we moved into in October. We were much closer to the wilderness. And it was soon easy to see that the wild came into our big yard. Of course we wouldn’t let little Bitz out alone, or at night. But my heart kept telling me that I needed a bodyguard for Bitz. Long story short, we found Bo.
Bo is a Peruvian Inca Orchid she came to us at six months old. Her parents had been born in Peru. And as we each have our stories and our demons, Bo came with her own fears and blessings. But we had faith she came to us for a reason and that if we were patient and worked with her, that she’d become a permanent part of our kith and kin.
Fast forward to today. I looked up in the direction Bo took off and I could see a very large brown animal booking it through the bramble with Bo now fast on her tail. Barefooted we made our way carefully after her (after dropping Bitzy off howling in the house). We didn’t expect to catch up in time to see the stranger and sure enough by the time we got there Bo was taking a quick shit next to the chainlink fence to mark her territory where the big animal must have jumped over to get away.
We are use to skunks, raccoons, tiny bobcats and squirrels if not the occasional bear at the trashcans on Monday nights. But whatever this was didn’t match any of the usual suspects. It didn’t look like a coyote or even a wolf. It was way bigger than Bo who’s a big girl in her own right. Our best guess is that it was perhaps a small mountain lion who had hoped to find the source of the sound of rippling water. Scary thought, as most grown panthers would have turned on our PIO without hesitation.
But for whatever reason, we were blessed that Bo ran off the intruder .. without injury to any of us. The first pre-amble for her own chapter of Not So Shaggy Dog Stories and now officially the bodyguard we hoped for our new home.
