Life is Your Story

(Laurentians 2010) It's 1AM, I can't sleep and neither can my dog so I grab a headlight and we go out into the night. He leads me along a wooded path covered in memories of paw prints and explorations with dogs of past and present.  We are surrounded by giant pines and we can hear the whisper of everything that is alive and dancing through the forest. We find a spot unobstructed by trees where we can sit and take in the starry, country sky.  A deep, warm silhouette of colours and shapes waltz their way across the canvas and every now and then a star loses its grip and falls.  I feel a wave of emotion come over me. I wonder where stars learn to twinkle and why some fall while the others stay in place. I hold my dog close and kiss his head. I hold him never wanting to let go because my love for him is so great and our time together so brief. As we head back toward the house, he nudges my hand with his head, barks and gestures. Suddenly, we are startled by a  strobe of light racin

Last night my dog Buddy came to me in a dream the way sometimes dearly departed souls visit you when you least expect it and the experience is so visceral, so deep that it both hurts and heals. I was in the country with a friend checking out a farm for sale. I exited one of the many tattered barns and as I came around the bend Buddy was just standing there.  He appeared as a hologram floating in the mist, in the fog. It had been 7 years since we last were together. I thought of him every day and while most of the thoughts were happy and provided me with wonderful memories of our life together; there were always those waves that washed over me at night - a tide burying me somewhere in the sand. But now he stood in front of me and the hologram transitioned into all of Buddy and his beauty - just the way I remembered him -- healthy, handsome and goofy of course. Buddy was quite a character. He was my birthday present when I turned 30 ( a Flat Coat Retriever we adopted from a shelt