Today I picked up a photo book I put together of pictures and memories from early on to the end of our dog’s life. Neither my husband or I had a dog growing up so getting one along with having young boys, I was asking for more work. What was I thinking? I remember at the beginning, fifteen years ago, this puppy then followed me around the house, just like a toddler. I remember it driving me crazy. 
I was done with that stage and yet I am back in this mode. The puppy stage! Yikes. Perhaps ignorance on our part, too, and trusting this animal in my house with wood floors and a potty mishap. I was so done.
While my husband and boys bonded with this dog, I had not. With the urine accident, a day off work, we had a meeting of the minds. I told this sweet, beautiful dog that this was not to happen ever again. Strangely enough, it did not. It was that day, we bonded. Just like correcting a child, you correct and then you love. Amazing.
Those eyes and facial expressions tell everything and as time goes, you can understand and know exactly what they want, feel or need. Do they train us or do we train them?
Our schedule through the years were around this dog, getting up to going to bed, potty breaks, walks, food preferences, etc. How can you not love them?
This dog of ours was a rescue and I was the one to find it on Petfinder.com. Still I was the one that was losing my patience with it until that one day and everything changed.
Our days in the last fifteen years were filled with caring for this four-legged animal, but she filled our lives with joy, love and laughter. There were times that when things were not all that great in our home, she would lay at my feet or do something to make us laugh to break the sadness.
As the last few months brought on an oral cancer and having it removed, we knew our days were numbered. Still we felt we had a few months but proved to only be a month, if that, as another tumor occurrence returned. No more surgery, no more pain for our selfishness.
Remember the day I said we had a meeting of the minds and then the facial expressions, too? The day we scheduled to put her down, I had been trying to take pics of her and I wanted one so bad of me and her together. I swear, she looked at me and as if she said, Enough!
I looked at her and said, okay, no more. It was time. I knew she was then ready although we were not, yet we were for her.
Today, is one month and to pick up the photo book from the store, then realizing it is the one-month anniversary, tears rolled and still. Only four weeks but feels like forever ago. I sure miss that dog. 
Who rescues who? ❤️
Just Pondering... 