Trip, our new Boykin spaniel puppy, has created his own “doggy door” on our screened-in porch. He found a weakness in the screen, at the bottom portion of the screen door, so that when he was really teeny, he would just weasel through a little, loose corner of the screen, hoisting himself and then crawling out to the back yard, as quick as he could muster. I didn’t dissuade this because frankly, I thought that it was cute, watching his wiggly little puppy butt crawl out the door, and also, I assumed that he had to get out to do his business, in a real big hurry. Now that Trip is a bigger puppy, and he has that “spring action” going on, which spaniels are noted for, his handmade doggy door has actually become more of a flap, and his agility skills are highly noted by me, as he leaps outside, through his own creation, as if he were a one-puppy football team, bursting through a banner, headed out to play for the state championship win, in order to “go potty.” And it should be noted that I am his one-person-loud-yet-not-so-agile-middle-aged-lady-cheerleading squad. (In truthfulness, potty training is not yet perfected with Trip, and yesterday there was a Roomba disaster, but that’s for another blog. The Roomba is a perfectly wonderful machine, in my mind, except that it’s one flaw is that it absolutely needs a sniff sensor. Our family is so chaotic with kids and animals, that we actually have two Roombas going, at any one time. Thank goodness for tile floors, Fabuloso, and Eckart Tolle’s podcasts on mindfulness.) Yesterday, was definitely a classic Monday, with this messy fiasco occurring, and my husband getting a flat tire on his brand new car, despite the fact that we barely ever drive anywhere these days. Mondays. At least it’s over for another week.
So, now I will go back to the point that I was trying to make about Trip’s homemade doggy door. It struck me that when we are young and exuberant, we don’t see limits. We burst through the screens that are supposed to stop us, with nary a thought about it. We head out to our chosen destinations with excitement, exhilaration and a belief in all of the fun and adventures, that await us, in the big, outside world. I know that as Trip grows older and wiser and bigger, and we finally get around to fixing the screen so that it is more impenetrable, he will start accepting his limits. Trip will become a little more cautious about what awaits him outside, due to conditioning and his life’s experiences. Still, I hope that he always keeps a little bit of that puppy-like innocence and overreaching curiosity that gave him the impulse to create his own door out, in the first place. And I hope that when this temporary screen of fear and doom and unrest gets lifted for us, in this world, we can all burst through the doors, into the big, beautiful, outside world, with dreams and excitement and anticipation, that have been with all of us, all along, since the days that we were just little, innocent pups, ourselves.