Dog Speed

We see and experience more every day the ways in which dogs have the power to help people. They help us see, hear, and stand when we cannot. They help us detect diseases and medical emergencies more quickly and accurately than even the most advanced technology can. They save us from what would inevitably be a lonely earth-bound existence without them, and they act as conduits for comfort and healing in times of unimaginable grief.

Every person I know who works in rescue, training, or other fields involving dogs has a meaningful story behind their canine-connected fate.

As we approach the end of the year, I reflect strongly on my own story – the particular ways in which dogs affected me at a pivotal point in my life that led me to do what I do... and to become who I am. I would like to share that story with you now.

During an anomalous self-destructive phase in her early twenties, my Mom contracted Hepatitis C through abusing intravenous drugs and sharing needles. For my entire life growing up, she was 100% clean, sober and seemingly, completely healthy. A vibrant, beautiful redhead with a contagious lust for life and a smile that shone for miles, my mom was always moving. She volunteered for countless organizations, using her many talents and her selfless heart to bring joy to others. She acted and sang with the children's traveling theater, where she performed plays weekly at different elementary schools around Denver. She did in-home day-care when we were growing up, creatively and interactively hosting a group of kids that were more like siblings to us than friends. During our Colorado winters, Mom would outfit all of us in snowsuits and delight in watching us fly down the big hill in the backyard on saucers. In the summers, we would ride our bikes around the park's path while Mom roller-skated, always going the opposite way so that she could pass and say hi as we sped by each other on our respective wheels. Mom read books on tape for the Library for the Blind; she was the head of the PTA; she baked incredible homemade pies, cookies and bread; she made me laugh harder than anyone or anything else ever has. During my third-grade talent show, she danced on stage with reckless abandon to Paul Simon's "Boy in the Bubble". Her ability to "dance like no one was watching", even when hundreds of people actually were, embarrassed me back then. Now, the thought brings on waves of appreciation and nostalgia so intense as to momentarily steal my breath.

In the meantime, Hepatitis C – known by those familiar with its dastardly ways as the "silent killer" – was slowly but surely turning my mom's liver into scar tissue. By the time she showed any symptoms of cirrhosis, (at an extremely youthful age 55), the disease was in its final stages, and - in spite of our incredible joint liver transplant in June of 2004 - she died six months and eight days later, thirteen minutes before midnight on the same day her own mother had passed away: New Year's Eve.

During the time that I was physically healing after surgery, and in the six months we spent with Mom in the ICU before she took her "final flight", I was (blessed to be) walking dogs and pet sitting as my primary source of income. Thank God for this, because I couldn't last an hour without collapsing under the weight of sadness, nor did I have energy available for use in anything customer service-related. So rather than return to the coffee shop job I had prior to the surgery, I walked and ran with dogs all day, every day. In the sun, the rain, the wind and the snow, we walked and ran and hiked. I cried and cried and cried. I cried and cried until through the cleansing wash of tears it was revealed...that my mom's absolute physical absence, translated into her absolute spiritual presence. It was during that time I spent with dogs – literally and figuratively moving forward, that I learned to live again after the person who gave me life had died.

A year later, I was invited to come live with friends on the Big Island of Hawaii. Here, I spent time with my friends and their dogs, exploring wild tropical terrain and adventuring across exquisite land and seascapes.

Being with dogs at this time allowed for a wide-open, honest flow of emotion. As brutal as it was to experience the depths of anguish and sorrow that I did, it allowed me - over time - to reach a place of acceptance. Even for the connection between my Mom and me to grow fathoms deeper, which I never would've imagined possible for souls as close as ours. By living fully and vividly - in the moment, where dogs always exist - I was free to grieve and heal, and feel all that the process entailed for me. This was crucial to my being able to move on; even to cultivate a greater and more divinely inspired understanding of what it meant to be alive.

When my mom's physical form perished, so too did the life I had known. It was an elemental turning point in the evolution of my spirit, and dogs were the earth angels that accompanied me as I picked my broken self up and continued on. Today, nine years later as of Dec. 31, 2013, dogs continue to inform and inspire my every move.