I know... It's a picture of an otter, but doing some picture surfing, I came across this picture and it reminded me of that giant stupid, animal. I DID mention that he was a saint bernard right? Apparently, nobody told HIM that. He was in constant fear of everything. The cat, thunder, dust bunnies, geese, the garbage disposal, car horns, the dark... Oh and did I mention that if it was snowing out, he was NOT going out? Yeah... I had to set up newspaper in the garage for him to do his business... A saint bernard that was afraid of snow... He was a gentle giant and a bit soft in the head, but as soft as he was in the head, he was a thousand times more soft in the heart.
Well, the point that I wanted to come to was that he had this fleece stuffed bunny. It was (at one point in time...) a light blue. By the time he was gone, the thing was a dark gray, missing all the stuffing and it was more like a ratty pile of fluff than anything that resembled what it once was in it's full glory. I referred to it as his "baby" and he treated it as such. It went with him everywhere. He slept with it while "sucking his thumb" (he used to suck on his dew claws... Weird...), he played with it, and loved showing it to people. Only those he deemed worthy were allowed to touch his baby, although it was kind of hard pressed to get anyone to touch the drool soaked gray rag... I have several pictures of my saint, but I don't have one of him and "his baby"...
I guess the whole point of this post is really about the moments in our lives that we take for granted. I never thought that there would be a moment that I would think back to that stinky, slimy, gray rag that he held so dear and the moments that I would watch him sleeping with it while he sucked on his dew claws and thought "Awww!" It would have taken about ten seconds to grab the camera and taken the picture. It's something that is permanently ingrained in my memory, sure, but ten second of my life and this picture of the otter could have been of my saint with his woobie.
Life is short. Filling it with such trivial things instead of the moments that really DO stick with us is something of a waste. Go out and live. Life is what you make of it. Fill it with love and laughter, good music, good friends, good food and good fun... And of course the awkward moments... We need to be able to laugh at ourselves too!
We have the same problem with some of our old dogs that passed away. We don't have very many good pictures, very few pictures at all actually, of the 4 legged animals that were a part of our family. It is one of our biggest regrets. Luckily now with the digital camera's it makes it easier, but it is still sad...
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