good dogs
february 26, 2007
i...have this strange ritual. it goes something like this:
whenever i see a dead dog or cat on the side of the road, i say to myself "all good dogs/cats go to heaven."
i don't know how it began or how i came up with that phrase but it's something i've been doing for years now. in many ways, i think it's to appease my own feelings of sorrow for them and so i can still concentrate and drive.
when i was working, my 40+ minute commute was a completely local drive. i didn't have to get onto any freeways and deal with the bumper to bumper horror although there was a great deal of local bumper to bumper traffic at times. driving on local streets however makes you privy to see a lot of things you typically won't see on freeways generally. one of which are stray animals which consequently lead to dead animals. my commute meandered through a few bad neighborhoods. you know, neighborhoods where you would make sure you had enough gas to eek you through without having to stop there. generally in those neighborhoods, you do end up seeing a lot of animals on the loose without a home.
most days, the most stressful part of the commute was not the cars or the traffic or the people. it was mainly dealing with seeing any fluffy mass of fur on the road. worse yet would be raw meat on the road. but invariably, 1-2 days out of the week would bring me upon some sort of mangled heap to the side of the road that was once a living and breathing happy go lucky animal.
to add to the heightened sense of stress was to see stray animals catapulting themselves into lanes of traffic. the only thing i could do was avert my eyes or cover them hoping the driver would be able to dodge it. i think in those 4 years of commute, i saw everything i could possibly see...from small chihuahuas running into traffic, mutts atrophied in the scorching heat of the summer sun to a dead deer lying next to my car with blood coming out of its mouth.
certainly not the way you want to start your morning i assure you.
i'm guessing though it must have been during all those years of commuting that i began to have that ritual. doesn't matter if it's winter spring summer or fall, there would always be one of god's creatures to be a recipient of my ritual..my prayer or wish to them if you will. it was i think, a control method to keep myself from crying.
i think most of my friends and probably most of you out there who has never met me would know that i'm a big animal lover. i'm the girl who stops their car to help a lost pet home. i'm the one who tries to chase a dog into my yard so i can leash them up and give them food while trying to win them over enough so i can read their tag (if there was one).
so needless to say, seeing animals not taken care of properly and let run amuck and such makes me especially angry and bitter when they end up in front of someone's car.
when sofia was visiting me last week, i took her to barnes and noble to get a book. while i was in the children's book section, i came across this one entitled dog heaven. as i stood there in B&N flipping through the book, tears stung my eyes and my heart just wrenched up into knots when i read the words and saw the simple illustrations. it pretty much sums up my wish for all those dogs who i saw and who ended up in heaven. it's especially poignant to see the main dog illustrated in white - which of course reminds me of my dear beloved snowie.
it was as if someone heard my ritual and put all my thoughts into a book because there's this one line in there that says "every dog becomes a good dog in Dog Heaven."
but nothing makes me bawl harder than the pages where it shows how dog angels bring dogs back to earth for a visit at their old home to make sure everthing is going well with the family he left behind. and also the part where they reunite with their friends again at the pearly gates. *blinks tears away*
currently listening to: jin feat. daniel wu, hk superstar
