Life is made of moments, and good lives are bounded by special moments. Life with a dog is also filled with moments, moments when the relationship comes to life, really works and connects, moments of love and trust and comfort and understanding. Fate is an intensely active dog, she lives a high-speed life in a world that is always slower than she is and more easily tired. She is loving and sweet, but like all great working dogs, rarely has the time to show it.
I sometimes fear for her, she burns at such a high temperature, I don’t see how she doesn’t implode sometimes.
She is too busy, too curious, moving too fast to explore every sound, movement, human being or sheep. We love Fate very much, and Fate loves everyone and everything in her life (she kissed one of the sheep on the nose this morning). But this morning she showed it in a different way, one of those bonding moments.
This morning, we had the sweetest moment with Fate. (Red shows it every day.) She was sleeping in her crate upstairs and Maria, on impulse, let her out of the crate at 5 a.m. She hopped up onto the bed, still groggy, she licked Maria on the nose, licked me on the nose (she loves to chew on my nose) and then suddenly wiggled forwardd and burrowed down between us, her head on Maria’s chest, her paws wrapped around my arm.
It was the most beautiful tableau, Fate curled up in the crook of Maria’s nest, both of them asleep. There was no room for me on that side of the bed. I quietly disentangled my arm and sat up in the bed to watch them, it was such a beautiful and touching and loving sight. The dog who never rests was totally at peace, the woman who always wakes up didn’t. It was a picture of total trust and connection.
I wished I could have taken a photo of it, but I very rarely take photos of life inside of the farmhouse, we share our lives but not all of our lives. It is good to say that many things are not shared, and this was one of them, it was too private, too intimate. Sometimes you wish life could remain like that forever, it was a still life that I treasured. Just before 6:30, an hour and a half later, as the sun was coming up, I stood up. I believe it was the longest time I have ever seen Fate be still like that, it was bridge crossed, something different. Fate is changing. She woke up and hopped off the bed, she jumped on an ever-patient Red, got him up and headed to the door, which she nosed open and rushed down to the back door, and beyond, the days’ work.