Domicile

He rings the doorbell.  When she barks from the upstairs bedroom, he barks right back.  He’s the resident dog whisperer in my life, happily greeting the dog who’s somehow taken up residence in my home. How is it that the woman so vehemently opposed to pets can be convinced she should allow one?

When Nick builds his case, several months ago now, lobbying for safe harbor of this timid young pup, I’m a victim of the bedrock of logic and reasoning I’ve been raising my kids upon.  It’s only temporary, he says, and he’ll “do everything.”  I’ll hardly notice she’s here, and she’ll be settled in her cage when his other activities take him away from the house.  How am I ever going to know if I can trust him, he asks me, if I don’t give him a chance to come through?  Hmmm.  Even I can’t argue with that.

And Nick has been nothing but true to his word.  He warns me when I return from a trip, absent from home for several days, I’ll need to call the dog by her name and pet her to remind her who I am.  It turns out this is all I’m ever required to do.  She’s walked, fed, washed, groomed, and disciplined by my boys. But more than anything, she’s loved.  And this is what gets me in the end.  As I watch them shower her with such love and affection, I can’t imagine myself ever denying them the opportunity to learn this magical, life-sustaining lesson:  To understand how to access and administer the transformative powers of love.

 

I see this animal inch out of her shell, her true self beginning to shine, but my dog whisperer sees so much more.  He sees a dog that’s maybe been shuttled from place to place, wary of becoming too comfortable, suspect of every individual ringing the doorbell who doesn’t bark back.  Maybe she’s never had a place to call home, perpetually lost, he thinks.  But in my house, he believes, she’s been found.

   

I recall a dream from my past.  It’s about being hounded ceaselessly by mangy dogs; I see only their bones, they are without hair or skin.  This dream rattles me as I’m dreaming it; I don’t like dogs as a rule, and I can’t shake these. But as they spend time in my presence, they begin to grow fur, to become healthy and alive.  I’m puzzled, and a little spooked, when I awake.  I ask my best dreamcatcher friends about it, they look at each other knowingly.  Of course, they say, this dream is about transformation, and me, I’m a change agent.

And so I think about the capacity of love to transform, what it means to be found, the role I play in this.  Being found, to me, means you’re free to be your true self. We’re all waiting for this, the safe haven where we can let our light shine, to be found by the tribe that values us for who we are; those people who embrace us for, want nothing more and expect nothing less than to be inundated with our onlyness, those unique gifts only we can bestow and the exclusive perspective only we can express.

This dog, Zoe, she has been found.  She knows the inexplicable, irrefutable, unfathomable feeling of being wanted and loved for all she is and all she aspires to be. There is nothing more rewarding to me in life, I decide, than creating that space where another can turn her light on and be found.  My dog whisperer, he knows how to create that space, too. He wouldn’t bark back if he didn’t.