It was only recently that I learned our dog is a special needs dog.

Somehow, I guess that fact eluded me.

I guess living with her since she was a puppy until now, I never noticed anything different about her.  I just figured she was normal.

Did I miss it because her love is unconditional and immense?

Or that she is loyal, almost to a selfish degree?

Or that she is easily unsettled, and when she is, she comes and lays on my feet, even if I am standing, pushing herself as hard up against me as she can.

Did I miss it because she is so completely happy when she is around us?

I have never had to raise my voice when I ask something of her, and her obedience is immediate.  I don’t ever recall teaching her to be obedient.

When I tell her to drop whatever she is carrying, she drops it.  We didn’t go through this one either to get it trained into her.  Somehow, she just knew. 

I have never had to punish her when she has done something wrong, but I can see she knows of my disappointment in her when I tell her not to do it again by the sad side-eye she gives me for the next few minutes afterward.

When I take a bike ride, she follows me as far as she thinks she can get away with towards the end of the drive and waits there until I come back.  Once or twice, she has edged her way down the ditch and is sitting there, facing the direction I left, watching for my return.  This makes Mama J quite uneasy, because actually this is her dog, and she likes her just as much as I do and doesn’t want her involved in an accident.

Her joy at my return is palpable.  Her eyes are bright, and her ears are laid back in a way that happens only when she is extremely happy.

I guess she must think her sole duty to us is unfeigned love and loyalty.

And she pretty much has that one aced.

Now, there are some things that happen when we aren’t around that she lets slip by.  Some things that by all appearances are things that only young dogs or pups do. 

She likes to dig holes. 

And she likes to chew on anything plastic.

Or, if we aren’t in the kitchen and there is food on the counter, she sometimes can’t help herself and hoists her long frame and front paws up there to sneak a little something off.

Mama J has issues with this.

Somehow, some of the simplest of things have become second instinct to her. 

For instance, she knows when I put my spoon or fork down for the last time at the table when I’m done with my meal.  She can be in a dead sleep but comes full awake at that sound.  I must put it down a little harder or something because it is then she rises from where she has been waiting patiently for what she knows comes next, which is that I hand my plate down to her to finish off anything I might have missed.

All of these things, including the not so good things she does rather infrequently, endear her to us.

Mama J calls her Bailey, and I guess that is the name she has at the vet.  I call her Soogah, after the pleasant way the wait staff in Germany would ask if I wanted some soogah in my tea.

But according to studies that have been done and according to how other dogs live and mature, they say it takes her breed 3 years to leave the puppy stage behind while as, they say, your normal dog leaves puppyhood after 1 year.

And by the time she will be 3 years old, her frame and weight will be that of a normal three-year-old large frame dog.  She already weighs in at well over 140 pounds. 

Which makes for somewhat of a heavy thump when she lands on my lap for her evening nap. 

I guess, though, it seems like the three years of her puppy stage are almost like a gift, if you will. 

That stage of unadulterated love; always happy, and none of the moody attitudes that fester in adults or whatever else it is that we take to ourselves because of greed, jealousy or any other untoward habits that are longstanding within us.   

And we adults are pretty adept at hiding these things away so that we can appear shiny clean to those we are with.

Childlike wonder is a stage of total innocence and humility that we so often disdain and call abnormal when we see a fellow adult portraying it.   And who has made it that way but we ourselves, who have arrived at a measurement we call normal, and anything too childlike that emanates from us is called abnormal.

But this really isn’t a true standard at all.  Nevertheless I guess it’s as close as we humans can get when it comes to our culture and how we approach schooling ourselves and our children.

I guess I wonder, sometimes, if all of us aren’t a little bit like my Soogah.  We all have places in our lives that have taken longer to develop or maybe never will develop.  Is that a problem? 

Is it a problem to my Soogah? 

She doesn’t seem to think so. 

All she cares about is how much she cares for me and Mama J. 

At least she doesn’t have the handicap to contend with that we adults do when we try so desperately hard to impress those around us with something we think we have arrived at that pertains to mainstream culture.

God bless all the Soogah’s among us.  For in them, it seems we see God Himself.