“When a beautiful rose dies, beauty does not die because it is not really in the rose. Beauty is an awareness in the mind.”
— Agnes Martin
On last week’s episode of T.H.E. we discussed how to know when you know, and writing that piece brought me back into the memory of the day I adopted my dog, Juice.
When I decided I was ready to adopt a new dog in early January of 2022, I first asked the Great Force of Consciousness to point me to my dog, and to make sure that I would know when I found him.
I wanted a dog that would be smart. One that would challenge me. One that would force me to continue growing even when I did not want to.
I scoured the websites of each humane society within a 100 mile range from my house and after a few days of searching I zeroed in on a dog that I believed could definitely be my dog.
He was listed on the website of a shelter about 30 miles away, but when I called to ask if I could meet him, the shelter told me that he was staying with a foster family who was considering adopting him. They said they would get back in touch as soon as they had an update.
My skin crawled in anticipation as I sat on pins and needles waiting to hear back. No more than 20 minutes went by and my phone rang. “Hi Sean”, said the lady on the other end, “I am sorry to tell you this, but Dash has just been adopted by the family that was fostering him. Once they heard that there was another interested party, they knew for sure that they couldn’t let him go.”
My Spirit slumped and I sighed, “Ahhh, I totally understand. Sounds like he is meant to be their dog, and I am happy for them because he looks like a good boy in his photos.”
Knowing I had to immediately let go because he was not my dog, I started surfing various Humane Society tabs I still had open and was floored to see that 8 Labrador puppies had just been added to the website of a different shelter, 50 miles away from my house.
The first puppy on the website was named Mason, and when I looked into his eyes in the photo, something clicked inside me. “I think you are him, dude”, I said out loud as my chest filled with butterflies while looking at the screen.
Alarm bells went off in my mind and a sudden sense of urgency filled my chest, quickly spreading to the tips of my fingers and toes as it pulsated to the beat of my heart.
“What if someone else adopts him before I can get there? What if this, and what if that”, said my brain.
“He is your dog, you know. Breathe, relax, and simply go get him”, said my heart.
I closed my computer, grabbed my keys, and immediately jumped into my car to drive out to the shelter. When I got there I entered in a huff asking, “are those lab puppies here, and can I please meet them?”
“Yeah, sure, they just went up online and I guarantee you they won’t still be here by tomorrow, so it is good you got here now”, said the person behind the front desk. “Looks like you’ll get the first pick.”
I was taken into the kennel area and in the first pen there were two dogs. The smaller of the two immediately locked eyes with mine as he sat up straight to full attention. It was as if he had been waiting for me to appear all day.
A quietly warm buzz tingled the inside of my heart when we locked eyes for the first time, and instantly I knew.
“It is you, buddy. I know it is you. But please allow me to do my due diligence before we get you out of here. I just need to meet your brothers to be sure that you are the one.”
I walked past the first pen and said hello to the other male pups, and was given a chance to meet each of them them one-on-one as a crowd of other people started arriving to pick from the same litter.
Reviewing the three other males from the far side down, none of them felt like my dog when in my lap in the small greeting room we were taken to. Each one cried or cowered and my heart knew that they were not right for me.
Then once I finally got to hold the first dog I had locked eyes with, my heart sprang open as he fanned me with his baby tail while wiggling all around in my lap.
Jumping up to swipe his tongue across the tip of my nose and down my face, I instantly knew that I was holding my dog. I had found him.
A river of emotion washed across my body and I felt a rising feeling, as if my body was becoming lighter. “You are coming home with me today, pal, and we are going to start a long and amazing life together”, I told him as I hugged his tiny soft body.
It turned out that the puppy I keyed in on was indeed Mason, the very same dog that caught my eye on the website. My intuition was right. It was him!
After doing all the paperwork and paying the shelter’s fees, my new buddy and I walked out front and straight into the courtyard near the parking lot for a few moments.
I cried tears of joy as the little guy chased after me like he had known me for years, immediately showing me his feisty and playful spirit. I knelt down, laughing straight from my uplifted soul, and decided I would ask my new friend his name.
“Hey buddy, please tell me what your name is”, I asked the baby ball of fur.
Looking straight into his almond brown eyes, the first word that came across my mind only a split-second later was, “JUICE”. I heard the word in a childlike tone from a voice full of giggles.
“Your name is Juice", I questioned him?
The little dog cocked his head to the side before breaking his sit to rush head-first into my shins. Then he jumped up, clawing at me, looking for praise.
“Ok pal, Juice it is”, I told him. “I would have gone with something else, personally, but your name is your name, dude.”
I set Juice’s tiny 11 pound body down on the passenger seat of my car, but once I climbed in, he jumped straight into my lap, put his head down on my arm, and immediately went to sleep.
“Ok bud, I guess you are riding home on my lap then”, I told him as a hearty laugh filled the space between us.
My heart erupted with love and I felt the fluttery rising feeling further lightening my body yet again. “Oh my GOD, I just adopted a puppy”, I said out loud through bouts of tears that cleansed my face like the rain.
“You are perfectly perfect, buddy. Oh wow, I love you so much and we have only just met”, I told him as the hair on my arms and legs stood straight up.
Our first day together does not even feel real when I recount it now. It was as if we spent the whole day in the clouds, communing directly with the Grand Force that dwells in the Highest Realm. My spirit filled with warm loving air and together we floated weightlessly where nothing could touch us, watching the “real world” humming about below us.
Feelings of how greatly I had just changed my life bloomed behind my ribcage. I was no longer riding solo with the ashes of my best friend tucked into my pocket. It was time to give my well-seasoned heart to a new companion, and to allow him to teach me how to love even more deeply. And together we would pay tribute to Tucker by spreading more of his ashes in new places on new adventures.
While Tucker had been an amazing companion who required little training since day one, he had his quirks, especially in his old age. I always wondered how he would have been if I had gotten him as a pup.
Juice was the first 8 week old puppy I had ever brought home which presented the opportunity for me to mold him into the perfect dog. I wanted him to surpass Tucker in every way, as all students do with their great Masters.
But in order to properly train him, I knew that I would require training as well. I welcomed the challenge, despite the fear of failure that nagged at my mind.
I knew I was going to have my work cut out for me, but I had no idea how much of my mental and physical energy that the puppy would demand in the first few wintery months of our new life together.
The temperature outside was -20°F during our first week at home together. Juice showed himself to be rather rambunctious as he erupted with energy during nearly every waking moment of each day.
He demanded frequent play for hours at a time since it was too cold to go on long walks through town, and he ate almost all of his food right out of my hands during our rigorous training sessions.
Sit. Stay. Heel. Repeat. Over and over until you are blue in the face. And then repeat them over again. All day. Every day.
Training was more mentally draining for me than I ever imagined it would be, but I had made a commitment to the dog and myself when I brought him home, and nothing was going to stop me from molding him into the perfect companion, even when I felt too tired and did not want to do the work required.
His constant need for attention tried my patience many times, but whenever he irked me I would conjure memories of Tucker’s elder years for perspective. Once an athletic runner, that dog slowed to a snails pace as his creaky body aged, and that was not easy for either of us to adjust to as we went through it together.
But knowing that Juice would one day slow down with age just like all dogs do enabled me to move beyond the memory of difficult past experiences to welcome and embrace the unbounded energy of his youth.
I made a promise to him to always be fully present whenever we were together. That I would willingly do my part to help him to live up to his full potential as his own dog. And that no matter what I would adapt to appreciate his never ending puppy energy.
I loved watching him interact with the world. Everything was new to him. Each smell, each sight. Something as mundane as a towel on the ground would elicit the same excited response from him as a piece of falling Swiss Cheese would. His interest in the new world he had only been born into months before was infectious.
Through simply being himself he showed me how I had allowed life to get “old” in many ways, and where I was taking it for granted. He injected my spirit with childlike wonder and the world began to feel new to me again. The fearlessness of his youth inspired me to move past my own fears of the unknown to put my creative energy into doing more meaningful work.
I laughed in realization in the first weeks of our time together. It was as if I was high on endorphins at all times, my brain swimming in serotonin. We laughed. We played. We trained. And we went outside to freeze our tails off while peeing in the snow.
Then, during the back half of our first month together, Juice offered his first true test of my will and temperament, and I felt at one point as if I had reached the brink of insanity for having believed I could raise a puppy all alone.
I wound up with a severe case of food poisoning from a slab of foul smelling pork that I never should have roasted, and for several days I could barely get up off of the floor. But how I felt did not matter to the baby animal that I had chosen to adopt during the coldest winter I had ever experienced.
Through bouts of vomiting and weeping on the floor, my sweet rambunctious puppy had no inkling of how I felt, nor did he care. All he knew was that his job was to PLAY and that I was a plaything!
I laid on the floor groaning like a beached whale, crying out for some imaginary woman to come hold me and to tell me I was going to be OK. I cried out for a partner that I did not have to come and take the responsibility of the puppy from me so I could sleep the sickness away. But no one came.
And as I cried out for help, my puppy chewed on my hands with his needle-like teeth, painfully drawing blood from my skin. He clawed at my face with his baby paws. He needed me, and no matter how I felt, I made a promise to always be there for him.
So I rose each day despite the hellish discomfort I felt in my mind and body, and we played until I would again topple back to the floor, collapsing on myself in need of more healing rest. And back down on the floor I would cry more, questioning why I had been so foolish as to think I could meet the demands of a puppy all alone.
It felt like I was dying, and I just wanted to die in peace. Play felt like torture, my hands were animated pin cushions, yet I forced myself to endure it all for him.
Thankfully though, after a few days my Spirit rose again and I departed the hell realm yet again with hopes of never returning. I regained my mental faculties and realized how quickly I lost my mind when my gut brain got sick, and I apologized to Juice for ever questioning his presence in my life.
I reminded myself that I adopted him in order to work towards becoming my best self, to learn restraint, and to create the structure I needed in order to curtail my own impulsive behaviors. I reminded myself that I wanted a dog that would challenge me, and that I had gotten exactly what I asked for.
The following months were full of training, play time, and the rest that followed our action. Juice demanded much dedicated attention to remain fulfilled, but showed himself to be a quick learner who was eager to receive the praises of his successes.
A friend gifted me a crate and he took to it quickly. I hung a bell from the front door and trained him to ring it when he needed to go to the bathroom. He started heeling at my command while out walking in the presence of other dogs. And all he wanted in return for his laser-like training focus was some cheese to inhale each time I said the word, “yes”.
No matter what we did together, that dog did it with his whole heart, and whatever he focused on received his full attention. He became a teacher to me and a student of mine all at once.
I realized that he served as a sort of mirror to show me how my own mind worked. He was not the impulsive one. He was not easily distracted. He was not telling himself his work was “too hard” to accomplish. I was. He was just a puppy doing what puppies do, and I had to get over myself to realize that he was not the only puppy in the house.
I asked myself how I could increase my focus to be more pointed like his and realized that the answer had been right in front of me all along.
I had to apply the same mentality to my life and my writing as I did with his training and development. I had to become militant in my practice, trusting that the structure I knew I needed would be what propelled me to new heights.
Only through dedicated and intentional effort would I gain everything I wanted to in this life, and I thanked Juice for reminding my inner child to play while I work.
I began to apply the same repetitive training methods I used on him to myself and dove head first into my writing practice to learn how rewarding it feels to click “publish” after toiling over sentence structure and messaging for days on end.
I learned how good it feels to complete what I start, and to meet self-imposed deadlines that foster self-imposed growth.
I learned how to observe and break my own destructive patterns of thought that obscured the progress of my development.
And I learned how good it feels to start fresh on a blank page each week to do it all over again, even when the work demands my full self to be given to it every single day.
And believe me, my friend. This practice has changed my life in ways that words do not hold enough weight to convey. Just like the myriads of other ways that the dog has too.
So we will keep going, and we will keep growing. And we will smile while we work.
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During this week’s practice we will pay attention to the little things in our world, because many little things add up to big things. We will listen to the birds sing as we walk. We will actively listen when others speak. We will observe how the behavior of others trigger behaviors within us.
We will be fully present as we experience the world, and we will see what perspective is gained through our intentional presence. And who knows… maybe our inner child might come out to play.
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If you are asking yourself, “Who the f&#@ is this guy and why am I sitting here reading what he has to say”, then start back at #1.
How can a tiny ball of fur be such a wonderful teacher?