Rediscovering Forgotten Pleasures
By Patty L. Fletcher
August 12, 2021
*Reader’s Note*
The following post was written for Ernest Dempsey’s RTS blog on mine and Blue’s one week anniversary and is now being added to the ‘Paws on the Street’ series.
Ernest and I welcome your comments on this post. We ask you please do so on the site where this essay is originally published.
Thanks in advance for reading, liking, Commenting on and sharing the post.
It’s been one week since I came home from The Seeing Eye® Dog Guide school with my new dog. His name is Blue. He’s a Black Labrador Golden Retriever Cross and he is wonderful.
Coming home with a new dog is much like coming home with a new baby. It’s widely believed these dogs come 100 percent ready to go out of the box and in
ways this is correct. But there are various things the handler must do to help firm up their skill once they’ve returned home.
Today like all those over the past week has been one of those whirlwind days that has you hitting the ground at full galop. It began at 5:15 AM with Chief Blue snuffling his nose into my ear whispering “Mother, wake up. Mother, I must go out!”
Giving a long stretch and humongous yawn I unashamedly begged, “Oh, can’t you give me just one more hour?”
“Snuffle! Snuffle! Mother, I must go out! Sneeze! Now! Please?”
Finally, at 5:25 I knew we could wait no longer, so up I got and out we went.
Walking barefoot through the dewy grass and breathing in the thick scent of summer blooms with the sounds of night things readying for sleep and the day things coming awake washing over me I began rediscovering the joy of early morning walks. Soon, rather than grumbling about having been awakened before even the sun had peeped its brilliantly smiling face over the rim of the world, I was rejoicing in the beauty of the beginning of a summer’s day.
Had I forgotten what it was like to have this wonderous time of silence with only the song of nature and a magnificent beast with rippling muscles eager to work for me wanting to obey my every wish by my side? How, could I have ever lived without such immense pleasure?
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