There are many, many, many circumstances for which I am grateful when it comes to Jackie, Gunner, and Rosco, and our relationships. Rosco is a baller, very biddable and loves everyone and is almost always happy. Gunner is perfect. In Jackie we hit the lottery, she is the sweetest girl and such a good dog in the house and loves just hanging out and going for walks, and being together with her family.
But y’all I really wanted to learn agility. Like right now, time’s a wastin’, and the clock is ticking so don’t dilly dally. It’s likely we’ll get there, and I am learning to be patient. Gunner has a real aptitude for agility, and indeed we had signed up to compete in our first AKC agility trial when we (again, gratefully) learned at his routine veterinary visit that Gunner has a heart condition. After his initial cardiology work up it was suggested by our veterinary cardiologist that Gunner not run agility, in order to protect his heart.
So that is a many-layered disappointment. The discovery that Gunner’s heart was enlarged and pressing into his trachea came hard on the heels of several other life-changing traumas, including a forced relocation away from a city that we love, the retirement of my competition horse Jazzy due to navicular disease followed by his death from colic, and the euthanasia decision that had to be made on behalf of my retired FEI horse Rijkens. Both my parents had recently finally succumbed to age related dementia after a heartbreaking decline. Layer all of this into the collective suffering of living through a very scary global pandemic.
Enter Jackie, into a loving home to be sure, but there’s a lot going on here from a mental and emotional standpoint. I really just want to get on with learning agility. There I said it. And I was, and still am, under the impression that playing agility can be a really good thing for a Border collie. But heart disease, and really just the unavoidable passage of time, has stepped in my way. I applied to BC Save to adopt our next Border collie while still living in Houston, before I ever even knew about Gunner’s enlarged heart, because I was very aware that at nine years old Gunner, as awesome as he is, would likely last at best another eight years.
A good friend of mine is going through the research phase of acquiring her next puppy. She said something that really struck a chord. “It’s not so much that I want another puppy, as that I want my current dog to live for another 20 years.” There is a reckoning I am struggling with between genuine gratitude for the animals in my life, versus the tremendous regret that they only live such a short time. I want to “hurry up” and develop a great relationship with Jackie and begin to play agility. Yet I want time to stand still so Gunner and I have more healthy, comfortable moments together.
There’s nothing for it. Save gratitude. I’m so grateful for the time and opportunities that I have had and continue to have with the animals in my life. Yet I admit there is part of me that somehow wants to beat the system, win over the house, cheat at life. In adopting Jackie I thought I was being so clever in circumventing heart disease, death, loss….I thought I would jump right in to the deep end of beginning to learn agility. Border collies love to learn, right? They are extremely active and focused on their owner, right? They have the mental and physical stamina to continue for hours at a time, right? Well, no, of course not. It’s ridiculous to expect any relationship to bloom in a moment. It’s going to take time.
Because the house always wins. So we all have to play by the rules. Who was it, Thomas Hobbes, that said life is brutish and short? The best I can do is focus on how moments in life can often be the opposite of brutish, and that while short, it just makes me all the more grateful for the grand times.
Pearls:
- Gratitude. When in doubt, look to the very many things in life for which to be grateful
- We all wish the animals and other loved ones in our lives could live on, happily and healthily, ad infinitum
- Since they can’t, I’m trying to be mindful of the good in the moment, and to be grateful
Many moments, like this one, for which to be grateful:
