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Jessie the golden after Hurricane Wilma, 2005, wondering what had happened to the mailbox.<\/p>\n
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When our daughter was in third grade, her class was given an assignment connected to Thanksgiving. The kids were supposed to create a sculpture from clay that expressed their gratitude for something in their lives. Parents were invited to the class presentation the day before the Thanksgiving holidays began.<\/p>\n
The day of the show and tell, Megan stood in front of her class and presented her little sculpture. \u201cI\u2019m grateful for the golden retriever I\u2019m going to get,\u201d she announced. \u201cAnd this is the dog.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her sculpture certainly looked like a golden – right down to the ears, the tail, the body stance, the shape of its head. \u00a0 Rob and I looked at each other: Huh?<\/em> We had three cats and no intention of getting a golden retriever or any dog.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re getting a dog?\u201d we asked her later.<\/p>\n \u201cI think so,\u201d she replied.<\/p>\n A couple of weeks later, a friend of Megan\u2019s asked if we would like a dog. The friend\u2019s father was a school cop who trained dogs to sniff out drugs in lockers and one of their dogs, a golden retriever, had washed out of the program. No dog, nope, nope, we said.<\/p>\n And then we saw her, a beautiful reddish gold retriever about two years old, who had been given up by her original family when the son developed asthma. Now she had washed out of the drug-sniffing program, and was going to end up at the pound unless someone adopted her.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll try her for a few days,\u201d we said. \u201cSee how she and the cats get along.\u201d<\/p>\n Well, Jessie came into the house, the three cats came over, sniffing, checking her out, and Jessie\u2019s tail wagged and wagged, and then she plopped down in front of Rob\u2019s desk and then in Megan\u2019s doorway, and that was that. She stayed for eleven wonderful years.<\/p>\n When Trish\u2019s mother went into an Alzheimer\u2019s unit, Jessie accompanied us each night for a visit \u2013 Rob, Trish, Megan, and Trish\u2019s dad, whom we called Buddy. The residents all knew her \u2013 by name \u2013 even though they didn\u2019t have a clue who we were. There were three women who were always on their way into Manhattan for dinner and a play, two of them dressed to kill, the third in her pajamas and big Barney the Dinosaur slippers, who Jessie always accompanied to the locked front door, where they believed their taxi awaited them, the magical Cinderella coach that would take them into NY.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere\u2019s the cab, Jess?\u201d Lillian would ask.<\/p>\n Jessie\u2019s tail wagged, she barked, the women waited at the locked door, in the locked ward. For Jessie, all humans were worthy of love and affection.<\/p>\n When Megan and her friends played music and sang for the residents of the unit, Jessie waited patiently, listening, her paws seeming to tap to the music, her tail swishing rhythmically, to and fro.<\/p>\n When we moved to the house where we live now, we had to put the cats at the vet for a night. The day we brought all three into the new house, Jessie was at the door, greeting each of them, nose to nose, her tail wagging, and we realized these cats were as much her family as we were. When our dusky conure joined the menagerie, she used to ride on Jessie\u2019s back and engage in this complicated ritual with doggie treats. Rob would pluck out a treat, hand it to Kali, and the bird would drop it directly into Jessie\u2019s mouth, a mouth that could just as easily have eaten the bird.<\/p>\n We took Jessie everywhere \u2013 to the gym, the grocery store, vacations. She captured the hearts of everyone with whom she came into contact. Her love was always unconditional. She taught us about love. Family. Community. Every afternoon, Rob took her down to the park in our neighborhood to play Frisbee. Kids would gather around, get into the Frisbee groove, and pretty soon, we\u2019d have teams. Jessie had her own fan club. Everyone in the neighborhood knew her \u2013 and she knew them.<\/p>\n At the end of Megan\u2019s freshman year at college, Jessie made the trip across the state with us, but she wasn\u2019t feeling well. It was hideously hot that day, mid-90s, no breeze, and she was suffering. One of us remained in the car with her, air conditioning blasting, while Megan\u2019s stuff was loaded into the car. On the way back across the state, we stopped to let Jessie out and she could barely stand. That night, one of our cats stood vigil next to her, and we knew the end was near.<\/p>\n We took her to the vet the next morning, early, fast, and discovered she had some sort of throat problem \u2013 she couldn\u2019t swallow, the prognosis sucked. Surgery that might not work, drugs that would cripple her. We opted for euthanasia. At the moment the vet injected her, her eyes flicked to each of us. She was aware, cognizant, she knew. She had gone the extra mile to wait until Megan was home again before she left. She had arrived when Megan was 8. She departed when Megan was 19.<\/p>\n Eleven years. In the grand scheme of things, it\u2019s not that long. But her impact on our lives was profound.<\/p>\n That third grade sculpture presentation is a great example of precognition, an aspect of synchronicity. Megan not only knew we were going to get a dog, she got the breed right!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jessie the golden after Hurricane Wilma, 2005, wondering what had happened to the mailbox. +++ When our daughter was in third grade, her class was given an assignment connected to Thanksgiving. The kids were supposed to create a sculpture from … Continue reading