There's a good chance I may have done irreparable damage to my relationship with Ollie the wiener dog tonight. But before I tell you why my normally loving and affectionate hound is stubbornly sitting a few feet away from me giving me the stare of shame, I feel that I should tell you what precipitated my furry little friend's icy rejection.
If you've been reading my blog for even just a few weeks, you know that I'm a freak when it comes to any type of disturbance in the atmosphere during the spring months. So of course, because the skies were cloudy and gray, the first thing I did when I arrived home this evening was to hop on the website of a local news station and watch the 6 p.m. weather report from my favorite weather guy. When he said it would be a while before the rain arrived, I quickly changed clothes, grabbed Ollie and his leash, and headed out for a walk. I alternated between checking the time and watching the sky while Ollie pranced along by my side, peacefully oblivious to my concern about getting caught in the rain.
Since we were moving at a pretty fast pace, I decided we had time to walk our normal route ... the route that takes us around an hour to complete. We were about 30 minutes away from home when I felt the first raindrop plop on my arm ... five minutes later, that one drop had invited about a million of his friends to join him in soaking Ollie and I from head to toe, or tail as the case may be. For a brief moment, I thought that maybe I should pick my wet dog up and just run home ... yeah, right ... I'm a walker, not a runner. By the time we finally made it home, I'm not sure which one of us looked more pathetic ... or which one of us was the most drenched.
Ollie wasted no time in demonstrating his disdain toward me once we were inside the house ... he shook his smelly dog rain all over me. Then just to prove how truly disappointed with me he was, he ran and jumped in my bed and wriggled his wet little wiener butt all over the sheets. When I told him to get down, he proceeded to burrow himself under the covers to ensure that my bed that my bed would smell sufficiently like wet dog. He finally emerged a few minutes ago and now he's ... well ... that leads me back to the beginning of my post. Ollie hasn't budged from his spot in front of me, and his stare of shame has seemingly intensified since I first began typing.
Curious as to why I'm telling you about my adventure in the rain with Ollie and his subsequent standoffish attitude? I must have said out loud to Ollie a hundred times during the first half of our walk that it wasn't going to rain. And I said that to him because I know how much he dislikes the rain ... picture me standing outside in the rain holding an umbrella over my wiener dog so that he can go potty without getting rained on. I trusted my favorite weather guy regarding the timing of the rain's arrival, and Ollie trusted me when I told him we'd get home before the rain set in ... there was a serious circle of trust going on there, friends. You can bet that before we hit the trail again on a gray and cloudy evening, I'll do more than watch a weather report that was posted an hour earlier ... you can bet I'll be checking two or three different radars to see just how close or far away the rain is. You can also bet that Ollie will probably think twice before he trusts me to not let him get rained on.
So here's the thing, friends ... it's a precious gift when someone trusts you, whether that someone is a human or an animal. My dad always told me to think of a person's trust in me as a valuable diamond that I was carrying as I walked across a swinging bridge made of rope. He said I should guard the diamond with my life and that I should always keep it close to my heart. My dad was a smart man ... the smartest man I've ever known when it came to doing the right thing or keeping my word.
Wait ... who's that climbing up on the couch and snuggling in beside me? That's my little furry pal who understands what it means to forgive ... he surely, surely does.
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