Merry Christmas!

May all who read this have a blessed day, remembering blessings can come in many, many guises. Click on the puppy below to be taken to a cute video of a dog's Christmas wish...


Happy Ho Ho, Y'all!

"Finding Inner Strength..."

If you can start the day without caffeine,

If you can get going without pep pills,

If you can always be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,

If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles,

If you can eat the same food every day and be grateful for it,

If you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time,

If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,

If you can ignore a friend's limited education and never correct him,

If you can resist treating a rich friend better than a poor friend, If you can conquer tension without medical help,

If you can relax without liquor,

If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,

Then most likely...

You are the family dog.

(my 'niece' Gracie Child)
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The above writing came from the land of forwarded emails, but warrants a "Touche'!"...the pic came from my brother, of Gracie as a pup with Hogzilla-ette...

There have been some studies recently released about our canine companions being 'more' than we realize in terms of intelligence, emotions, and learning abilities. For those of us that have long considered all of life to be related and of the same Essence, who look at the 2-legged's position as one of "steward" to this planet and not "master" of all, it comes as zero surprise, these findings.

Dog's Display of Logic and Dogs and English

To go one step further, when I'm out walking in the woods...or really anywhere for that matter...I have learned to implicitly trust them when there is a sudden change in, say, Mercy's behavior. I'm also a firm believer that dogs and animals are much more in tune with the real world than we think-too-much humans are, and that they see energy fields and other dimensions we refuse to acknowledge and see ourselves. Sure, she catches sight of a squirrel and she perks up, but on countless occasions she has stopped dead in her tracks and sensed something was not right...and I honor and defer to her knowing something I don't...and without going into details let's just say I use her as an alternate set of 'eyes' for very good reasons. I can also tell you she can pick out a jerk a mile away. Very useful 'eyes', she has.

Woof, y'all!

Travelogue: "It's a Dog's Life..."

While out in Rapid City, SD, I discovered they had a few off-leash dog parks...and I visited Braeburn Park along Rapid Creek with a daily vengeance. Suffice it to say my (then) 2 pups demanded nothing less. Interestingly, the old open field area, now mowed, was once a little community with houses and a small motel. What happened? The great Rapid City flood of June 9-10, 1972, where 238 died in the raging floodwaters. A monstrous thunderstorm complex sat virtually motionless for a number of hours over the edge of the Black Hills; 15 inches of rain fell in just 6 hours around Nemo...and the ensuing wall of water rushing downhill was nothing less than catastrophic.

(One of many post-flood scenes in Rapid City)

(Rapid Creek today, at Braeburn Park)

Instead of rebuilding the area, they enacted codes to prevent residential re-development in flood prone areas...hence the formation of places like Braeburn Dog Park....even today there are some stone steps and pieces of concrete foundations there serving as a reminder of that fateful day...and so, with it now being a leash-free dog park, I thought I'd honor some of the 4-legged 'regulars' who helped make that place what it is today,and made any given day a whole lot brighter...you don't have to know them to appreciate their Souls...

There is something to be said for letting dogs run free together...they develop an amazing social order and behavior, and the sense of 'community' and interrelatedness at that park was profound. If you got there early enough in the morning (i.e. slightly before sunrise, you might be lucky enough to share the park with some Bighorn rams or Mule Deer...that is, until the pups saw them, too. Ducks swimming in the creek's eddies, osprey and eagles flying up and down the creek looking for an easy trout...wildflowers, in season...just a magical peaceful place, the kind we could all use in this rat-race of a life many of us live in. So here's my toast to our 4-legged companions, many of whom we have adopted, and three cheers for the Tao they give us in abundance!