#10 ‘LimitLess’
10.
‘LimitLess’
As I was brought up to believe that humans are the main protagonists in life, and animals are kept for their needs, without a grain of doubt about that fact, I was an owner during my childhood, of a very sweet, depressed yellow canary bird in a cage, a couple of uncommunicative tiny fish in a round aquarium, and the sweetest little turtle kidnapped from a seaside forest on the way back from one of our summer vacations.
I don’t remember what happened to the yellow bird, I remember that the fish ate each other, and the last golden one died of loneliness, and that my beloved turtle never woke up on one of the early spring days.
Encounters with the dogs which my grandparents kept in the village house were at the level of annoyance since they were just kept to serve as a live alarm system, barking the whole day and night. Kept their entire life on a half meter chain in their dog house in the garden, through hot summers and freezing winters and all called Bobi, they were just perceived mean and dangerous. You couldn’t come near them because they would bite you in the agony of their miserable life. So, naturally, the perception of a dog was fearful.
But then all of a sudden, there was Blue, and a seed of change was planted. A sweet little warm Dalmatian puppy which was naturally a joy, until, to the great surprise of my uncle and aunt, grew to be a big uncontrollable, overactive, ‘crazy’ dog. He ended up in the village garden as they didn’t have the heart to get rid of him in a more radical way… There, Blue met Cecilia, a mix of all kinds of small dogs. She turned out to be a great hunter of mice and rats, and so deserved a free run on the property.
Blue made his advance on Cecilia, who on several occasions heroically delivered puppies, each almost half of her size. Later, when Blue turned to be as uncontrollable as to be put to sleep, Cecilia kept on delivering puppies in an incestuous way by her son Pixy.
This all sounds maybe complicated, but that’s just how the attitude towards the best friend of men in our little country was in those times…
To go back to my story…
Pixy was the smartest dog you can imagine. Just like any other dog our family owned, he was never trained and domesticated in a real sense, but he understood everything… Big shifts in the family portrait allowed him to run loose in the garden since my grandparents were not alive anymore and therefore not in charge of the rules. We started exploring our feelings, which were growing in the direction of curiosity and even sympathy towards those four-legged creatures. My life was long ago staged in another country, and on my visits back home Pixy was the first dog that I ever dared to get close to and touch.
Meeting the soul behind those beautiful loving brown eyes, and his need to sit next to me and be cuddled, was overwhelming to me. I could spend hours feeling the connection to him. I felt that he was looking at me and asking himself what he could do to help me… I loved that dog… Every time I had to part with him to travel back to Amsterdam I feared that it would be the last time I see him. His fate was not easy. He and Cecilia spent every winter alone on a couple of blankets in a shed, waiting for the neighbours to come and feed them, while the family was back in the comfort of their warm town apartments during the cold months, coming to check on them and the house only from time to time until the spring would break. But they were fine like that… It was more than some of their sorts were getting from life anyhow.
It is needless to say how life-changing the discovery of love and communication to a form of existence so different to ours and yet fascinatingly connected on the most important level to us was. Even his passing left a remarkable mark on our lives.
About two years ago, Pixy was run over by a car…
It took my family months to dare to tell me the news. Since I was a vegetarian and so dedicated to animal protection and true love towards them, they were sure that I would suffer such a shock from which I would probably not be able to recover. According to my mother, the truth would kill me!
It still makes me laugh, looking back on the long telephone calls in which my aunt was acting as if Pixy was still around, telling imaginary stories about him, pretending to yell at him or telling him the sweetest words while giving him a delicious treat interrupting our call. It went to such an extent that when finally, during my next visit a tragicomic moment came in which this well-intended lie became clear and I found out that Pixy actually ran to the other side of the road following the irresistible call of nature and met his fate under a car, I could only be fascinated by the unconditional love and the extent to which the limitless effort my dearest ones went to ease my pain.
I still cherish the love founded by Pixy and it’s transcendent value. It extended further to a deep connection to Ginger, a little privileged bundle of joy. An exclusive Labradoodle breed that was designed to be suitable for being a non-allergic companion and an ideal family dog. Overwhelmingly loving and incredibly clever, born to this world in circumstances totally opposite to Pixy but approximately the same time, he deepened the understanding of the meaning of kindness, patience, the moment of now and the appreciation of belonging.
Although trusted to me to take care of him on the occasions in which his family travelled the world, it seemed to me that Ginger was there at almost all my difficult moments during the last years. The time spent with him felt as if I had a privilege to learn from him. I learned that what made his life so rich and made him so loving and loved, was the ability to translate every feeling into the moment of now. To see the best of the situation in which he is. Acceptance and willingness to offer his good mood. To be loving and make a priority to trust and share the circle where all the goodness is welcome, in whichever form and shape, except for another male dog… But that’s another story.
I am grateful to my friends and his owners to have made this possible.
