Author: still a dreamer

The Gift

/ still a dreamer / 2 Comments

Not long ago I received a gift. No, it wasn’t John Beresford Tipton with a check for a million dollars and my future security. It was a gift for my heart … two gifts, actually.
DeuceThe first was an e-mail from someone who adopted a rescue dog from me many years ago. Larry wrote that he and his wife Jeannie had searched me out on the web to tell me that Deuce had passed away and to thank me for “the best dog they ever had”. In quiet tears, I responded … to thank them for letting me know, and indeed, what a wonderful dog Deuce had been. I was so grateful that Larry and his family had adopted him.
It wasn’t but three weeks later that the second gift arrived … another e-mail. Jon and Diane also searched me out on the web to let me know that Spike had just passed away at 13, also to thank me for “the best dog they ever had”. Again, I responded in kind.
For ten years I ran a rescue for, I believe, the most difficult dog to place – the American Pit Bull Terrier. I placed Deuce and Spike well over 12 years ago when they were just youngsters, and before e-mail. Although we kept in touch, it wasn’t easy when one’s lives were consumed with multiple jobs and, in my case, a demanding rescue on top of it. But the best thing about placing Deuce, Spike, and all the other `pits’ I placed, was I never had to look back. I knew, through my extensive screening, breed education and adoption requirements, that these pups were now set for life. (Ask any of my adopters – they were grilled!)
SpikeRescuing `pits’ presented tremendous challenges – they are truly misunderstood dogs. Their history, their true temperament, their genuine love of people – what the public needed to know was not what they heard. Instead, they were slammed with horrific, isolated incidents where unstable and undoubtedly abused pit bull terriers attacked humans. As if there were no other news going on in the world.
Pit bull terriers were … and are … horribly abused, tortured, made insane and killed — for not being good enough fighters. Imagine the worst … they suffered much more. Some, still alive, were simply wrapped up in plastic bags and dropped in the garbage. Just not good enough.
My heart was broken more times than I can tell in saving these dogs’ lives. So many were, and are, stable, loving and kind dogs, euthanized nonetheless for simply being born the wrong breed and being bred to excess.
Yet, as a rescue, I received so many gifts. I was truly blessed with people who came forward to help me save this wonderful dog no one wanted. Vets, trainers, foster homes, experienced rescue people to guide me in effectively screening … all appeared. The pit bull terriers I had the fortune to know and help were themselves gifts I will never forget. But perhaps the greatest gifts, for both the dogs and me, were the truly caring and devoted people who took them in.
These rescue dogs lived long, healthy lives, and then I received one more gift.
An e-mail to let me know.

Note: This article was published in the July 2007 issue of The Animal Companion. Although I have not actively operated my APBT rescue for over 7 years, these wonderful people contacting me inspired me to write about one of my many experiences in rescue and with the breed.

 

Changing A Planet …

/ still a dreamer

Tonight, I share just one thought of my own, and one great quote.

I believe that we are each immensely powerful, and what we do in even the seemingly most unimportant way can affect others in so many positive ways. One of the most beneficial things we can do is simply to be our highest and best, and that is a way to change a whole planet.

“Every time a (person) stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others … he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest wall of oppression and resistance.” – Robert F. Kennedy

 

Try and Relax!

/ still a dreamer

ClaudeHave you ever noticed the positions your animals get into? They make it look as if they invented the word `relax’. They stretch out, especially in the heat, so every potential draft will ease slowly over their languid bodies. They make it look so damn easy.
Now you might think that this is a comment on my own inability to relax, which is far from the truth. In fact, it brings to mind an experience of many moons ago when my then-husband came home to find me lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling or into space. He asked what was I doing?
I said “nothing.”
With an incredulous look on his face, he said, “What do you mean, nothing?”
“I mean nothing. I’m doing nothing. As in, nothing.” Seemed pretty clear to me.
“How could you just be doing nothing,” he asked. “You have to be doing something!”
Now THIS was a man who had a hard time relaxing!
I tried to search for what it was I was doing, and all I came up with was … in trying to satisfy the question … “I guess I’m daydreaming .. or just thinking.”
And then, with the same confused face, he asked, “How can you just lie there and do nothing?”
Well, I thought I had just come up with an answer as to what I was doing, but I let that go, and said, “Here, just lie down, and kind of stare into space and let your mind relax. You know, just drift around a bit.”
He lay down and for all intents and purposes, assumed the position one would take if they were to relax. He looked up at the ceiling.
Then he looked at me.
“I don’t know how you can just do nothing. I can’t do nothing.”
I don’t really remember what happened after that, except that he wasn’t next to me anymore. Probably feeling guilty for now having the audacity to have actually spent a few moments of my life doing nothing, I’m sure I joined him and made it my business to start doing something.
But I think the animals still have the right idea. They have learned the fine art of doing nothing, of just being in the moment. They stretch out … close their eyes … take a deep breath and they’re off into dreamland or wherever animals go when they close their eyes. We have such a lot to learn from them … and this is one of their best lessons.
It’s the weekend – try and relax!

Keeping Your Creativity Going

/ still a dreamer / 1 Comment

Kerry Blue ProfileThere are days when writing a whole lot is just not going to be the order of the day. So instead, I’m offering a link to a wonderful article, (sent me by a fellow creative), about how to keep our motivation going. So here you are – regardless of what kind of creative activity you engage in – how to get started, and how to maintain it. Enjoy a good read!

Like terrier art? Check out my website!

Limiting Our Good

/ still a dreamer

“Expect your every need to be met, expect the answer to every problem, expect abundance at every level, expect to grow spiritually.” – Eileen Caddy

This quote appears in The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, in the chapter on Recovering A Sense of Possibility. It represents the reality that we are entitled to, but it’s often the opposite of how so many of us think – we tend to limit our good. We don’t do it consciously, but rather as having absorbed and thus practiced over a lifetime a mentality of scarcity, of there never being enough. Or thoughts that our good fortune will run out. Or why would we be deserving of having our wishes fulfilled? There are a multitude of variations and we each know our own.

From the time we were small we were trained by our parents, our teachers, our ministers, etc. in specific ways we should always behave, even if we instinctively felt they were wrong. But in order to receive approval, to be a “good” boy or a “good” girl, we acquiesced and changed our behavior, never wanting to be snubbed or punished. Depending on who these figures were/are, they may have filled us with ideas of staying small and not believing in our dreams, with ideas of scarcity and lack.

And so we have grown, but not thrived, always worrying where our next raise, job, mortgage payment or creative idea will come from. The idea that all our positive expectations might be met is unfathomable.

So then, instead of opening ourselves to possibility and gratefully accepting the good we’re offered, we further complicate things and refuse it because it isn’t exactly the way we wanted it. And wanting it only our way is another way of limiting our good.

We are part of a loving, creative, abundant universe … there IS enough but to truly experience it, we first need to change how we think. We need to know that when we change our thinking and open ourselves to all abundance and possibility, and trust that it will come to us in the form we most need it regardless of the limitations we keep trying to impose, we will then be on our way.

Please visit my website for this and other writing samples!