Tag: labrador retriever

Ralphie’s Revenge

On Thursday, I didn’t take my usual, several miles long walk with our dogs. It started out as a rainy day and I wanted to get errands done, but also, I wanted to escape a little bit, to get away from the mundane – to get the “hell out of Dodge”, so to speak. Ralphie, our Labrador retriever, doesn’t, at all, appreciate when we miss a daily walk. He can’t speak, so he lets his anger and frustration be known, in other ways.

As my husband and I settled down on the couch, to watch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Thursday evening, Ralphie eyed us carefully and deliberately, up and down. He then went to his toy tub and carefully chose one of his stuffed animals. I think that Ralphie purposely picked out the newest, cutest one. He brought the stuffed animal behind the couch, where we were sitting, and he slowly and methodically, tore the poor, little, helpless stuffie, into a million little pieces. Ralphie made sure that we heard the seams ripping, and the fabric shredding effortlessly, in the clutches of his powerful jaws and sharp teeth. I tried to pretend like I didn’t notice. I feigned indifference, but I was admittedly, very relieved when Ralphie’s tooth finally pierced the poor little toy’s squeaker and I no longer had to hear its wailing squeals. Friday morning, I had a huge massacre of stuffing and crinkly paper and cloth carcass to clean up, having been mercilessly spread, all over the floor. Ralphie left the murder scene as a warning, I am sure. I couldn’t stop flashing back in my mind, to that horse head scene in the Godfather movie.

Friday, I took the dogs on a long, long walk. Ralphie, by the way, is a Dudley Labrador retriever. Dudley labs are yellow labs with pinkish-brown noses and lips, as opposed to black noses. A woman asked me about his coloring once. I told her that Ralphie is a Dudley lab. She thought that I had said that Ralphie was a “deadly lab.” When we figured out the miscommunication, we both laughed and I said, “I don’t think that there is such thing as a deadly lab!” Now . . . . I’m not so sure.

Time Stoppers

Over the weekend, my husband and I took our dogs to the beach for a long walk. The beach is the ultimate idea of Heaven for our labrador retriever, Ralphie. Everything that typically distracts Ralphie, which is usually mostly everything – kids, dogs, strollers, bikes, smells, animal waste, every pole and lamppost, any random piece of litter, etc., no longer distracts him when we are there. He is single-minded. Ralphie’s goal is for my husband to throw the ball as far out into the water as he can and for Ralphie to retrieve that said ball, endlessly. People stop their cars to watch Ralphie go out into the Gulf with only the tip of his pinkish-brown nose poking up through the water in the far distance, swimming out, purposefully and decidedly, to get the ball – an object he typically, otherwise, cares very little about.

I get such vicarious joy watching Ralphie work his passion. I suspect others do, too, when they pause to watch him swim out into the horizon. When we watch any living being, so in-step with the moment, so single-minded in his or her purpose, so full of determination and joy, time stops. When we watch someone or something, caught up in a fervency that is so innate to them that it is almost instinctual, we are all reminded of the things that make us feverish for life and for all of us, that is something different. Whether it be cooking, reading, flying, running, writing, singing, fishing, gardening, driving, sewing, painting, debating, hiking, working on puzzles, working on cars, meditating, golfing, skiing, etc. etc., we all have “that thing” – “that thing” that makes us agitated to still have to any other distractions . . . even hunger, even breathing. In a world so full of interruptions, cheap and easy diversions, responsibilities, and duties and routine, it is good to be reminded of those world-stopping moments, intimate only to our own connection with our deepest longings; our connection to the realest part of our souls. What are your passions? What activities make the world stop for you? What do you do to connect to that part of yourself on a daily basis? What moments are you “in your element”? These are all good questions to ponder at the beginning of the year to make sure that we are not cheating ourselves out of what is vital to us. These are the things that give our lives, Life.

Real Cowboy

Yesterday my husband, our dogs and I set out on an “adventure day”. We like to hike so we headed out to some of the more rural state parks in our area.  The first stop was a bust.  Our first hike was more of a “sludge through mud” experience as due to a lot of recent rainstorms,  the trail had turned into more of a swamp.  Even one of the bridges on the trail was mostly under water.  My husband, my collie and I were less than pleased with the start of our adventure.  Our Labrador retriever was in doggy heaven.  He’d much rather swim a trail than hike it, anyway.

We decided to head to a more inland state park and our GPS took us through some windy, remote dirt roads to get to it.  When we hit an unexpected pothole, I started to wonder how many miles we would have to walk through fields for assistance since our phones had limited service.  Luckily, our tire survived and we made it to our next destination.  This park had the trails that we were dreaming about since starting the adventure.  They were secluded and provided natural shade cover.  The shade was created by beautiful, old, bowing trees with branches that formed a perfect canopy with their thick foliage, providing just the right amount of protection from the hot sun.  As we set out on the first trail, dodging huge spider webs created by spiders as big as my hand, the rumbling of a big summer storm started in the distance.  We started walking faster, keeping pace with Ralphie, our retriever, whose nose always keeps him at least 100 steps ahead of everyone else.  When it became clear that the storm was a reality that we couldn’t force away with our own sheer will and determination, we reluctantly turned back.  Grumpy and salty and cranky, we decided to at least salvage the day, with a stop at one of our favorite taco joints that we discovered on one of our many soccer game day trips over the years.  This is a restaurant that we don’t get to frequently due to the distance from our home, but it is one that never disappoints.

Once again the GPS guided us through the road less traveled and as we were driving we passed a man who looked like he was horseback riding.  But he wasn’t.  He was riding a cow.  Now to be sure that we weren’t hallucinating, my husband and I decided to turn around and validate to ourselves that we indeed had seen a real cowboy – a man literally riding a cow.  There they were again, contentedly trotting along and when I asked to take a picture, the sweet man and his bovine companion happily obliged.

Sometimes our adventures don’t always turn out the way we plan.  We are often prisoners of our own expectations.  I find that when I surrender to where the adventure wants to take me, it is usually a far more interesting expedition, than what my limited imagination has already planned and tries fervently to control.  If we expect the unexpected, and go with the flow, life is grand!