Thanks for the Blessings,
Izzie
July 5, 2012
For a few days now, I thought I saw it coming. My 14 year
old mixed-Lab Izzie just seemed to be saying she had worn out. When I came home yesterday, she was just lying
still, knew I was there, but did not rise to greet me. She was clearly not herself. She was in trouble. And in some way got it
across to me that her time was drawing rapidly to an end.
As God would have it, a good friend and vet was returning
from out of town and coming right near the house. He knows Izzy. He knew to send me with her to a specialized
vet clinic. His concern for a tumor in
the spleen was confirmed with an x-ray. The
decision was made for us on behalf of Izzie. Her family gathered around her on a blanket. She knew we
were there…and raised her head every once in a while to take account of us. I can’t say that anyone anticipates what they
will do as the vet injects the “mercy shot.” The natural thing for me was just what I had
done countless times—I just held her head in mine until she could no longer hold herself.
The vet said “she’s gone.” But I have done this before and know she’s
gone into my heart. At the moment of that injection, she leapt forever into my life. Suffice it to say what we all know: We don’t rescue
dogs. They rescue us. Their God’s living reminders of what we humans
are supposed to do—that unconditional love which only asks that we be there for
them to the end. After all, we are not
owners, but God’s appointed stewards of creation. They are given to us to teach
us to receive and give love. We give
them back as offerings of our love for God from our own hands.
The story of Isabel, dubbed “Izzie,” is a special one. We lost our first Lab to cancer after nine
years. About a year later, there was
this ad in the paper for a Lab which had been abandoned in her back yard. (She
was even missing the same tooth as Annabelle!)
We always saw Izzie as “Annabelle’s gift.” Her premature death made way for Izzie’s new
home. So in a sense, Izzy gave us back
those senior years that we never had in Annabelle. But lest anyone think this
was only replacement, think again—this dog Izzie was a dog in her own right and
forever upright dog. She more than
walked me through difficult times and gave me what Wendell Berry calls “the
peace of wild things.”
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
— Wendell Berry
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