Posted by It’s His Birthday and He’ll Fart if He Wants to!
I adopted my 6/7-year old beagle Oreo (shelter name Ike) last July after a failed stint with a 1-year old Lab mix. Oreo was a stray so no one knows his exact birthday. Well, a puppy needs a birthday so I’ve decided to take my fascination with the number 42 and apply it to the dog. So today, 4/24 is his birthday!
Having Oreo hasn’t always been easy. If you think he’s shy now, you should’ve seen him when I first got him. He was trembling the first time I came home after a day of work. He skulked around the house like he didn’t trust his own steps. Every extant noise spooked him. He wouldn’t touch his Kong. He shied away from the neighborhood kids. He would take a wide berth around parked cars (mostly, it’s SUVs that scare him) and refuse to move when a car drove by us. Even the sound of his doggy backpack clips clicking around his body would spook him.
He sometimes forgets to use his doggy door to go out to “make”. He drools when he’s nervous. He sheds (yes, Beagles shed). He farts. Oh wait, so do I. His food, vaccines and vet bills cost a pretty penny. It’s not cheap to board him when I go out-of-town.
In the final analysis, I wouldn’t trade him for the world. (Seriously the world can go sit on it).
He’s improved by leaps and bounds. He literally leaps and bounds around when we’re starting on a walk. He likes to see my parents, whom I keep reminding are his dada and dadi. He walks up to the neighborhood kids. He knows my mannerisms and my movements.
I exercise a lot more now that I have him. We go for walks in the morning before I go to work and then after I get home from work. We even go hiking in the local parks. I know people around my neighborhood now because I go out to walk him. I lost 10 lbs in the first three weeks after adopting him. He loves being outside and if I have him with me, I like being outside too. I’m probably more heart-broken than him when I have to take him to boarding kennel even though I trust them and it’s a great place for him.
If you’ve never had a pet, you probably won’t understand the unconditional joy that a pet (cat or dog) brings. I’m not saying that human interactions are worse or better. It’s just a different quality.
He gets happy over the smallest things, be it his Kong or going outside or just being petted. He reminds me to live in the moment, so to speak. He reminds me to eat well (yes I need a reminder and frak you if you don’t understand that) and to exercise. He reminds to enjoy my life because even though he’s still shy and un-beagleish at times, I know he does his best with the circumstances he’s given. If a little dog, who was probably abused in a prior life, can get over his bad times, then so can I.
I LOVE MY OREO DOGGY!!
(I know there are those in the Mohammedan community who dislike dogs and feel modern ownership/parenthood of canines is haram. I don’t even want to waste space defending my decision to you because you’re probably already so inured to an anti-canine viewpoint that you won’t listen anyway. Go put on some cement shoes and take a long walk off a short pier.)
