We adopted a dog

By Stephen Damon

On Monday we adopted a two-year old dog from the rescue center of Pets Unlimited.  She’s very a sweet dog who has had a very traumatic life as a stray in Oakland as well as living in two adoption centers for 5 months.  Apparently the Oakland shelter rarely keeps a dog for as long as they kept her.  So somebody must’ve liked her to spare her life for so long. 

We hadn’t planned on adopting another dog for a while, but when I saw her picture on the window of Pets Unlimited I felt a deep connection and went in to meet her.  The Tibetans say that anyone you meet in this life, you’ve had a close connection to in another lifetime.  I don’t know what to make of life and rebirth, but I have felt strong karmic connections to a few people that seem to come from another level of reality, unknown to me.  I feel just such a karmic connection to her.  Getting to know her I have found myself thinking about rebirth and karma quite a lot.

And trying to train her (she’s not house broken ) has taken a good deal of patience.  I have lived with a dog nearly all of my adult life and doing so has taught me a great deal about patience and loving kindness and compassion.  Unlike people who can be fooled by words of comfort that don’t come from the depths of your being, a dog watches your body language and  keenly senses the “atmosphere” around you. They are never fooled. So I have found that I have to let the Dharma of loving kindness saturate every cell of my being in order to bring comfort to a traumatized animal.  This morning as I write this entry to our blog I feel the great vow To free all beings more than ever. I feel that I will learn a lot about myself and my relationship to all of my Bodhisattva vows in the next few months.

Bows,

Stephen