Sniffing Down a Scent

People often like to identify my profession by the title, "Dog Walker." I bristle at that term! My dogs are definitely not 'walking' and the leashes required to make them walk have long been abandoned. Besides being free to run and play as they please, they have been given another gift that goes paw-in-paw with the off-leash experience... freedom to sniff down a scent!

If you've ever watched a dog on a leash, despited their deep, drooling desire to please their master, the intrigue of a juicy smell will compel them to stop the forward motion to check it out. Risking their owner's wrath and impatient yank on their leash, they have to respond to the siren call of scent. It is hard-wired in them! If you've ever experienced watching TV without control of the remote (if you are female, this is your lot in life!), and you've found yourself at the mercy of a channel-flipping fanatic, you get a whiff of a dog's frustration. Just as something interesting catches your attention, it is whisked away in a frenzy to keep moving at all costs. For me it is easier to leave the room than wrestle with my thwarted interests. Dogs however are more faithful in their devotion to just being in your presence, and gradually learn to ignore the summons of their scent glands.

'Sniffing down a scent.' Something in this phrase resonates within me. What is it?... Freedom. Freedom to pursue a thought to fruition. Bingo! That's it! A long forgotten skill that was lost in the commotion of cradles, commitments of motherhood, carpooling and choreographing the dance steps of a busy family. Lots of leash yanking when a interesting thought presented possibilities. No time, no energy, no creativity left to sniff it out. Just tuck it away in hopes of pursuit on another day.

Empty-nesthood has been a discovery of the joys of 'off-leash adventuring.' Freedom to sniff down a thought to fulfillment and closure. Rediscovery that my scent glands still work! In fact they work even better for having experienced all the aromas of motherhood. Thoughts are deeper and richer like wine that was stored away in the dark cellars of my preoccupied brain. Finding these fermented treasures is a daily delight! (Sorry for the gush of mixed metaphors all at once...the well-spring of creative contemplation has erupted...opps, that was another one!) Bear with me as I reacquaint myself with my mind that I thought was long gone! My mental stuttering is slowly smoothing out. I now 'woman' the remote control to my own gray matter!

If you are still in the midst of leash-yanking interruptions in your life, take heart. Your ability to sniff down a scent doesn't diminish with lack of use. Store away the idea for future perusal, and as often as you can, unclip your collar for a mini 'off-leash adventure' of your own making.

Perpetrating Prejudice

There is a dog that I've been trying to recruit for my adventures. He is an Airdale named Winston. Such a distinguished looking gentleman with his bristly whiskers and jaunty stride. I've accosted his master a few times with requests to take him to the park along with my pack of loonies. I always figured his consistent "no" was a reaction to the chaos he witnessed in my car as we stopped along the street to greet him. The roar of yelping and barking emanating out wasn't exactly ice cream truck melodies. (I've spoken to my crew about their poor marketing appeal, but they just don't get it!) Finally one day the owner 'fessed up'...Winston has a problem. He despises boxers...goes ballistic, despite his distinguished manner, when he comes face-to-smashed-in-face with a boxer. It used to be just one specific boxer, with whom he had had a tiff, but now it had escalated to include all boxers. Winston is a perpetrator of mass prejudice.

Confession time. I am wrestling with this oozing energy myself, though boxers aren't what set me off. It started during the battle over the dog park issues. One of the 'deal breakers' for the park rangers was the conflicts between dogs and cyclists. Up to that time I had been very accepting of the bicycle crowd that raced through the dog park area. I just worked around the shortcuts they forged through parking lots, their indifference to stop signs and their determination to ride 2 or 3 abreast on the narrow road leading into the dog park. I was actually glad to see people enjoying themselves out in nature. Like Winston, my slate was fairly clean until an altercation occurred. In an effort to help solve the dog/cyclist conflicts, I began asking cyclists to simply stay on the road instead of cutting through the parking lot where excited dogs were loading and unloading from cars. This required almost nothing on their part to tweek their route to avoid this hotspot... maybe it added an extra 5 seconds to their course. I didn't even try to point out the stop sign at the entrance end of the lot, since 98% of the riders totally ignore this irrelevant obstruction to their flow of freedom. (Being on a bike somehow exempts a person from the need to comply with the rules of the road). My 'Winston moment' came when one of the bicyclists responded to my carefully crafted request to avoid detouring through the parking lot with, "Nope, this works fer me." Something about that self-centered retort kicked me deep down in my gut. We were losing access to this beautiful part of the dog park largely because of this kind of attitude on the part of cyclists. Suddenly, I hated cyclists...all cyclists. I didn't want to, but that kick broke something open inside of me that gushed out to include anyone pedalling on 2 wheels.

Poison, absolute poison! I can sympathize with Winston's prejudice problem. I would have loved to nurture the passionate energy of this poison except for 2 reasons. One, most of my favorite people in the world are cyclists. And two, Jesus calls me to love, not hatred. Damn! So, like the cleanup of the oil spewing in the Gulf waters, I have some mopping up to do... and a leak to plug. Not an easy task when I (we)'ve lost the dog park battle, and the cyclists (who pay zippo to ride through there), lost nothing. I guess it did "work fer' that cyclist...worked us right out of our park.

Luckily God is the 'mop-up' specialist. His indwelling Spirit busts me every time the adrenalin of anger roils up within me. "Lynette, we need to talk." And so we do. I talk it out with Him and ask Him for forgiveness and new power to love. Sometimes I can even feel my old vicarious joy at seeing a cyclist delighting in the freedom of the road. The parking lot is a mute issue now since that no longer officially belongs to the dog park, so mostly I feel numbness as I watch the bikers pedal happily by. I still must confess that I long to see a park ranger pull over a cyclist for blazing through a stop sign, but I doubt that will ever happen. God obviously still has some work to do in my heart...just like Winston's.

I used to cringe when I heard Randy Newman's song, "Short People" with the reoccurring lyrics, "Short people ain't got no reason to live!" What about being short disqualifies us from contributing in life? Izzy, a canine, not a people, would take exception to this demeaning decree! A Norwich Terrier of miniature stature (stands all of 10 inches high), Izzy is a tornado of activity! Not only does she keep up with the hairy monsters that thunder all around her (imagine yourself running at knee high level to a pack of giants), but she often leads the "posse" in their wild chases. Undaunted when they roll her in their clumbsiness of foot, she has earned their respect to participate in their lives! Small isn't just cute; it is agile, resilent, determined, resourceful and... sneaky.

Case in point...Izzy once again. She leverages her tiny body and irresistable facial hair that pokes out in all directions, onto my lap as I am driving the gang to the park. No one else is small enough to solicit that privilege. Then she nestles in adorably and all but purrs. Only when I lift her off to exit the car do I realize Izzy's "nestling" wasn't about affection, but about working the zipper open on my fanny pack (turned to the front), which held all the yum yums for the trip. She had successfully consumed a big handful of dog treats single-muzzledly! Ah, the little sneak...maybe Randy Newman was right after all.

But that got me to thinking about small things. And that's probably what got me making a radical U-turn along a busy highway when I saw a "Bonsai Trees For Sale" sign, strategically placed in my path. The miniature oaks and elms sitting on the hood of a beat up car were irresistible! I was on my way to somewhere important, but something yelled "squirrel" inside of me and I was forced off course! I almost plunked down $195 for one of the rugged-trunked beauties. Something about their big tree appearance in Lilliputian form so captures my imagination that I am transported, like Gulliver, to the shade below their canopy of miniscule leaves. Perhaps it was the shrinking of my brain that made the $195 seem like such a deal. At least I had enough wherewithall to look at the small, younger, less expensive trees, but they just didn't have the character or transportive magic that the older, mature trees exuded. I wanted maturity, but I wasn't willing to pay for it.

Now that statement rattling around in my brain really got me to thinking. How like that I am in my willingess to allow God to form me over the years? I want the deep, wisdom-etched character of my bonsai beauties, but I want it now. Instant maturity. Those two words form an absolute oxymoron! And even more so in God's curriculum of character development! Like my bonsai friends, some wires are required, some branch trimming, some root restrictions... and lots of time! You can't rush such a work of art...it's a living thing that must grow into genuine maturity. That's what makes it valuable.

So, Randy Newman, take your diatribe against short people (and the millions you raked in from that song as tall people launched it to a #2 hit), and consider the irrepressible Izzies and the character-carved bonsais that make "small" absolutely delightful in this world!