Mom and I have just been so devastated since we got the news that our friend Bailey passed away. Today on our run we spent most of the time thinking about her, and her family that is left behind without her. So our adventure today was more somber than usual.
We got a late start, so Mom said that we had to go slow and walk a lot so that I wouldn’t get too hot. But I have a suspicion that Mom wanted us to go slow for herself too; especially since pretty soon we were up in a cloud and so it wasn’t hot anymore, but Mom was still walking a lot.
Mom and I are so good at leashing, that she doesn’t even need to talk to me to let me know when it’s time to walk, or start running again. Even when I’m ahead and I can’t see her, I can feel the slightest change in the pressure of the leash and I know how I need to change my own running. Mom says that’s what love is.
When we were walking around up in the cloud, I couldn’t see anything off the side of the trail. Sometimes when we’re up on this trail I can look around and see all of the different places that Mom and I usually run, but today I couldn’t even see down to where we’d been hiking a few minutes before. Sometimes the fog is creepy, but today it was kind of peaceful because it meant that I couldn’t hear or smell all the other people and doggies on my trial until we were close by them, so it made it feel less crowded: like it was just Mom and me. And I didn’t even need to see Mom because if I went ahead and she was running behind me, I could still feel her on the leash and hear her footsteps and breathing.
I hope that Mom never has to live without me, because I don’t think she has much going on in her life other than me. I don’t know if she could ever be happy without me there to snuggle her or take her on adventures, so I plan to stick around. But I think that even if she can’t see me some day, we’ll always have a leash tying us together. Because that’s what love is. I bet Bailey is still on her leash with our friend Beverly too, they just can’t see each other anymore.
Mom got too sad writing this, and her face started to leak something awful, so she told me that I have to finish with something happy. Part way down the hill, I felt Mom slow down in a funny place. When I turned around to look at her, she was picking something up off the ground. “Oscar! I found a dollar!” she said, holding up a wadded up piece of paper. People get so excited about the dumbest things. Mom could run by 100 squirrels without reacting, but a crummy piece of paper in the trail had her more excited than a new squeaky toy.
“Is it enough to buy me a new squeaky toy?” I asked. “Well, no… but…” “Then I don’t know what you’re so excited about. C’mon, I smell a Friend up ahead. Let’s go check it out.”
-Oscar the Pooch
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