depending on how you spin it,

i'm either hopeful or deluded.  

in the face of certain distressing realities, i can get discouraged but i seem to eventually hammer the world into some kind of cooperation...so that i get to believe things will all turn out ok.  that i'm not just wasting my time on the planet, but actually moving some mystery a little closer to its fulfillment.  i seriously don't know what i'm doing.  i'm counting on the universe to make sense of it, some day.  

my plan to travel with friends fell through this past weekend.   i already had the necessities, i.e. a full tank and a critter sitter, so i decided to head up to the mountains for a little R&R.   i took off, alone.   but of course i had to go by the shelter for walkies on my way out of town and maybe you're not surprised that i left there much later than i'd planned.  that i left there, totally unprepared, with a canine companion named Mr. Banks.  Godhelpme.

Cat-like quiet but overtly little grey dogish, Mr. B looks something like a Chinese Crested...sort of lion maned head with big round eyes.  slick, shiney black bat ears.  He's a bit rat-ish in the tail area and the fur is possom sparse along his back.  then there's that slip of pink tongue that peeks out one side of his mouth.  To pile on more misfortune, he's not terribly personable...not happy or friendly.  He growls.  You can just be holding him and without warning, he starts.  he doesn't like to be reached for or led on a leash.  those things also make him grumbly.  But his ribs stick out and his hip bones threaten to slice through his skin, so i'm not judging.  I don't think he's got a lot of reason to like us.  

my thinking - what there was of it that day - went something like this:

maybe Banks could use a little R&R, as well.... 

it bucketed rain, we got there late, the power was off, the phone was dead.  there was the dank basement, the power restored, the screech of the pump alarm.  there was the prospect of two days without running water, except for the kind that was gushing off the roof.  i might have turned right around and headed home but i had my cranky little companion to consider.  i'd signed him out for a two day foster, so we made the best of it.  

as it happened, i was the more adaptable of the two of us.  i was willing to pee outside.  

Banks' attitude wasn't entirely positive about this new situation, which i'd somehow mistaken for an improvement over the kennel cage.  he didn't seem to be enjoying himself and i was disappointed.  here's where you get into that zen-master thing.  he was teaching me something about my own expectations.  i'd imagined that he'd be happy and that he'd remember what it was like to be playful and trusting.  and there were a couple of moments like that.  but after two days of peacefulness and gentle reassurance...two days of bountiful food and the chance to run around outside, he snapped at me...not just once, but twice before calmly turning and walking into his crate.  i closed the door softly behind him and never mentioned it again.  but something changed for Banks.  he got sick in the night and continued to have an upset g.i. tract the next day.  he was cooperative but withdrawn.  he seemed more sad than ever.

things improved when a friend stopped by.  he immediately took to her.  climbed into her lap.  wanted to be held.  barked at her feet for her attention.  responded to her call.  he'd done none of that with me.

now there's something i need to consider.  i've always gotten on with dogs sort of effortlessly and here i was extending myself on behalf of this one and he wasn't buying.  the easy, less humbling explanation is that i reminded him of someone negative from his past.  but maybe it isn't that simple.  maybe there's something i need to face, like the possibility that i was communicating my own selfish expectations...that i was looking for some change or gratitude.  maybe he felt like i was using him.  certainly that wasn't my intention, but dogs read the unacknowledged in us.  they respond as much to what we're about as they do to what we're saying.   maybe he sensed that i was after an affirmation of my own goodness or that my decision to bring him along reeked of a certain smugness...  

maybe he had the sense that, of the two of us, i was more the needy.

hmm.

talk about ugly....