My Shadow

I’ve owned dogs my whole life.  Some I’ve loved immensely, some were special in their own way but I just wasn’t as close to.  Some were the kids dogs, some of them were my husband’s dog.  But then into my life entered a huge, goofy, drooling giant of a dog.  He wasn’t even suppose to be mine.  He was my daughter’s she paid for him.  I paid for the airline ticket to get him here.  She loved her puppy, I thought he was huge and loved to pee lakes in my house.  She went to school everyday and I stayed home with her moose of a dog.

The bonding process started.  Jedi was hooked.  Only on the wrong person.  Sure my daughter was cool.  She’d play with him, she’d feed him but there was this other person in his life that he soon learned he couldn’t live without.  It wasn’t suppose to happen this way.  I still find myself apologizing after over four years for stealing her dog.  I didn’t mean to, it just happened.

Along the way something else got stolen……MY HEART.  This dog has become my life.  He’s the first thing I wake up to in the morning and the last thing I see when I fall asleep at night.  Okay, there is my husband there too and I love him as well but this big goofy presence is what keeps me sane during the long days when my family is gone.

I am disabled.  I can’t work anymore and it gets lonely sitting in a house all day with no one around.  But I’m never alone.  I mean I am literally NEVER alone.  No matter where I go in the house my shadow is not far behind.  Yes I even am accompanied to the restroom by him.  Ah life has no more privacy and that is just fine by me!

One story that my husband loves to tell is the month I flew back to Maine to help my son and his wife with their first baby.  Jedi was devastated.  He sat on the couch day and night looking out the front window just waiting for me to come home.  He wouldn’t sleep in his bed, he would stay on that couch by the front door until I returned.  I remember the night I got home.  It was one o’clock in the morning and there he was sitting on the couch waiting for me.  WOW what a homecoming.   I had never felt so loved then at that moment.  His grandma was home and life could finally go on.  Ever since then it is so hard to have to leave him behind if I need to go anywhere, but I know right where I will find him when I return.

Jedi is my buddy, my best friend, someone to cry on when I am upset, someone to laugh at when he does goofy things like try to bark and sound intimidating with a giant stuffed hedgehog in his mouth.  He makes these days just a little bit brighter like all of our furry friends do.  Yet he is so much more to me then just a dog.  So much more then any other dog I have ever owned has been to me.  He is one of the greatest blessings I have ever received, along with my family of course.

Everyday I find myself thanking God for this special blessing in my life.  And maybe God doesn’t want to hear it but everyday I say a prayer that Jedi will be blessed with a longer then average life….heck I’ve even prayed that maybe somehow he could be immortal, but I know that is just a dream.  I have to learn to enjoy every second that I have with him.  Great Dane’s lives are way too short.  I will be lost when he is gone but I will also have the cherished memories of the times we had together.  And God willing those times will continue for several more years.