24 March 2024
My Jolene is but eight months old as I write these words. She’s little, but she does not see herself as under-sized in any way. In fact, she behaves as if she’s just as large as any of the creatures she chases away, in order to protect me.
My awareness of her awareness of her canine duty is very touching.
The other day, a herd of deer romped through the far side of my property. Little Jolene, my Puppy Girl, went onto a log, and went on point, ready to take off after them. They promptly left the premises. There was no need for the beagle instrument to bay, and thereby basically say:
YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE.
The shiny green leaves and unbloomed buds on my fledgling rose bushes thus stand a much better chance of surviving this year than they did last year. This past November, I pruned the plants back, hard, with the thought:
You’ll either make it or not, come spring.
Come spring, this past week, my roses are thriving.
My pride of protection of my rose bushes meshes with the pride of protection that my adorable hound feels toward me. She’s a joy to behold, a joy to love, ergo a joy to protect from whatever might threaten her.
The pride of protection is inherent in the art of loving. True love exists, and flourishes, whenever the lover protects his beloved, like the eagle protects its nest. To shelter and safeguard from harm whatever you love is to valiantly revere the object of a very supreme emotion.
That object can be a person, a pet, a nation, an ideal, a sentiment, a book, a belief, a way of life, aeons of consecrated history, centuries of cherished traditions. Anyone who claims to love someone, or something, but who fails to even make a stab at protecting his inamorata is a liar, a coward, a cowardly liar.
The proof is in that pudding. The pride of protection is either there, or it’s not. It can’t be faked, although I’ve grimly observed odious, garish, outlandish, and vulgar attempts to contrive it. A true-blue heart can tell the difference between farce and fidelity. To defend my true-blue heart, I’ve forced myself to see the ugly truths of a fraud whom I’d believed to be a worthy beloved, a genuine friend, a sincere confidant.
And once the wretched reality was fully known, and accepted, swallowed one miserable morsel at a time, I felt free to love the real thing. I also feel liberated from any guilt over having cared for a charlatan. In actuality, I’d unknowingly nurtured the counterfeit image that the phoney had nimbly used against me. I’d betrayed neither the ideal nor the real; he had.
I’d not given my loyalty to a cheat; I gave it to a concocted image that crumbled the minute the light of truth shone upon it. Granted, my perceptive skills drilled right through that mask of deception with a beacon of illumination that must have felt like a dagger to the imposter. The sword of revelation is not a blunt object.
The tangled web woven by the deceiver entraps its immoral maker much more than it does the non-weaver who unwittingly gets wrapped up in the whoppers, big and small.
Once I awakened to the nitty-gritty that hid behind practiced lies and contrived smiles, I could not again fall asleep on that pillow of deceit. My defense of the domestic realm forbids it!
My Jolene is so devoted to defending our domestic realm that she has a phenomenally difficult time permitting herself to fall asleep at night. She tenaciously fights closing those beautiful Lanbur eyes. Oftentimes, she’ll climb onto my lap, look up into my eyes, searching them for a way to stay awake, asking, pleading me for help from the drowzies descending upon her doggy eyelids.
I pet her lovely face and ears and assure her that sleeping is not the same thing as being asleep on the job.
Would that I could make the same statement about the human parasites leeching off of the body politic!
Last summer, I wasn’t prepared for, or even capable of understanding, the passionate allegiance of this beagle for her owner. This summer, I’ll be prepared for rewarding the loyalty and commitment to my partnership with a hound.
The endless summer begins with those rays of luminous sunshine.