By Fiona Best – Counsellor

This morning I walked my very old dog, as I do each morning. Jack, a Rottweiler, German shepherd, blue heeler cross, is a big black and white dog. He is going on 15 and is weighed down by a rapidly growing lipoma, (a benign fatty tumour), the size of a rockmelon, which is located on his lower left side. Every day he demands to go walking both morning and afternoon. Jack walks up and down hills, he sets the pace…slow and steady, he stops to smell everything that takes his fancy; he takes as much time as he needs to sense his world. I just go along with him. Jack owns himself. He doesn’t feel sorry for himself. He isn’t thwarted by stinking thoughts that say things like,

‘Oh I’m far too old to walk this far. This growth on my side is going to kill me soon. I might as well give up now.’

No, instead Jack just loves his life. In spite of stiff arthritic joints and a giant tumour on his side, one paw at a time, instead of waiting to die, he lives his life. As we walked up the street this morning there was a cool breeze blowing, the first signs of a change of weather after very hot and humid days. Last night it rained and the grass was heavy with droplets of water. The early morning sun shone through the grass bringing each drop to life. It was almost painful to see the beauty because I couldn’t hang on to it, I just had to feel the passing radiance and the let it go as Jack ambled on pulling me to go with him. I remembered a poem, by William Blake, that my mother used to quote when I was a child.

‘He who binds himself to a joy
Does the winged life destroy.
He who kisses the joy as it flies,
Lives in eternity’s sunrise.’

Jack and I crossed a road and continued up a slight incline. The old dog paused intermittently; he sniffed and marked some territory. Slightly ahead I saw a lady crouched down on the grass in beside the footpath outside her home. With garden scissors she was trimming the unruly tufts of grass growing around the base of a bottle brush tree. As we approached her, two small dogs in the yard next door to her house started yapping loudly at Jack. Their barking ripped into the air and I could see the two little dogs, one white and one brown, through the picket fence. They were leaping up and down wildly as though alternately hurled upwards with each explosive little bark. The lady trimming the grass, still crouched down on the ground, glowered at me and Jack.

‘It’s better if you walk quickly past that house,’ she said.

I smiled a little bit and then I looked at her and I looked at Jack. She looked at Jack too and noticed the growth on his side.

‘Jack is very old and he doesn’t walk quickly anymore.’

‘Oh I see,’ she said a bit awkwardly. ‘Well there’s another woman who walks past here with her dog,’ she continued. ‘I don’t think she’s right in the head. She just stands there and looks at those dogs. Well, the noise…’

‘The barking must be really annoying for you,’ I said.

‘I just wish she’d put the dogs out in the back yard,’ she whispered tightly.

‘Maybe you could just ask her,’ I said.

The lady shrugged and looked a bit helpless. Then Jack pulled at the lead. It was time to move on. We walked slowly up to the end of the street. Jack was panting in a rhythm, he looked like he was smiling, (he often does), and his gums were red and well perfused. I remembered when he was really sick a few years ago – his gums were almost white. We crossed the street and started back towards home. Jack then needed to stop again to smell another dog’s marking at the corner shop. My husband says that this is Jack’s way of reading the news. A young man in a white station wagon, a work van of some sort, pulled up opposite the lady who was still crouched down trimming the grass around the tree. I heard the young man say something, then I heard the lady respond,

‘Oh yes,’ she said in deadening tones, ‘I heard the traffic was dreadful this morning.’

I felt myself cringe a little inside.

‘It’s terrible out that way, there’s always a bottle neck…’

Jack and I left the conversation behind us. The lady’s words were fading as we walked, but the feeling tone could still be heard. Hopeless, pointless, defeated, she sounded like a tired old ambulance siren; slowed down and off key whining. I felt a bit sick in my stomach. I knew the woman was just in a habit of talking that way. I also knew that her habit of talking that way would keep her stuck in feeling helpless and unhappy. It made me feel very grateful to have changed my words and my attitudes over the years. No whinging blaming, complaining or gossiping about myself or others or life. And no listening to whinging, blaming, complaining or gossiping either. Life is what it is, I thought: the noisy dogs, the traffic jam, and the hot humid weather. It is what it is and no amount of me railing against it will ever change anything.

The Buddhists say that all suffering is a result of resisting what is. I agree with them. So I try to learn from Jack. He doesn’t get caught up in stinking thinking like people do. Every day I practice being present like Jack. Where ever I am I feel my feet on the ground and I notice my breathing. I sense what is going on around me. I notice the smells, the breezes, the water on the grass. I notice the sunlit spider’s web, strands of bright water beads, suspended up between trees like a net against a clean blue sky. I see the frowning lady trimming the unruly grass and I feel the dog pulling on the lead. Like Jack, I pretty much pay attention to what is happening now. And life is good.

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