In dog we trust

My person has been slack lately re blogging so I decided to steal a page and put my view about. I am slate the stupid dog . My person calls me that and I might add it's not true. Just because I ignore the silly commands she and the other people at my house expect me to follow.
Dont they know a dog who spent the first 10 months of his life hungry cannot ignore any food within reach, it's not as if they need it, their fridge is full of vegetable matter and it seems its all they eat, there is no accounting for some tastes. There is one that they call the other that likes and occasionally gets a piece of meat, he was not at all happy when I took the steak off his plate, he is a bit slow.... and the smell was divine and well worth the yelling and humming and haaring that went on for a bit. My person did give him some of her tofu so it's not as if he went without.
Now they have taken to putting the fruit at the back of the sink, and the bread. I used to really enjoy the whole loaf, it really filled me up and I used to watch the other when he would spend quite a bit of time looking for it, his memory is not what it used to be so nothing was ever said and I think he thought he must have eaten it. But when the vet saw me she said uh uh Slate needs to go on a diet. So now all the fruit and bread goes behind the sink where I cant quite reach , I am working on how to reach it and if Dorje the one with teeth would just let me stand on him I could do it. I do like a piece of fruit, they expect me to be happy with the skins, and I am. But a nice juicy pear or even a whole paw paw is much better and a plate of avocados yummm, I am sure you will all agree. Next time I will tell you about the black plastic squares and all that palaver that went on after I ate it.
Sometimes her downstairs the short one, brings some ripe avocado's and even some meat for the other one. I managed to get those treats, I was careful to lick the plates squeaky clean, my person was voicing her query to the other one about what these clean plates from downstairs were doing in her kitchen. I got away with that for quite a while until one day her downstairs asked if my person enjoyed the avocado's and so on and then they put 2 and 2 together and so now these treats go straight in the fridge damn!
The one downstairs also makes cakes and they are divine and when they left one for later on the table one day, I will admit to having a good chunk of it but its not as if I ate it all, my tongue just wouldn't quite reach the end and the cover was just a bit too far to flip right off. But none of them not even the other would have what was left , no they gave it to the chooks, I wonder why, something was said about drool and stuff on the plate.
Now the one with teeth, he is the stupid one, a few weeks ago I thought it was time he realised who was boss, all I did was jump on him quite a bit so he would realise I was taller and bigger and that I should be the one in charge, and you know what he did, he fought me!!! My people all came running and there was much screaming and palaver until my person grabbed a laundry basket and put it over my head , she then was very surprised to see that I had skin ripped off above my eye and that the silly one was unmarked. So guess what ? the silly one was made to go inside and I was made a great deal of fuss over, man they lay it on , rescue remedy, betadine , calls to the vet and so on and then for weeks I had to suffer the indignity of being called scarface. Thank goodness the hair has grown back now and my person is calling me slate again. I dont love this name, after all the people who gave it to me had a nasty person at their house who treated us all rather badly and I was very happy to be out of there, even if I did nearly die in the process, so you can see that a new name would be just fine, however they think I am too stupid to come to a new name, they need to realise I wont come to any name when I am protecting the property from would be intruders.
Lately though my person has started calling me Marley and I like that, she watched this movie called Marley and Me and she laughed so much in one part she fell off her chair, so of course, Dorje and I rushed up and started licking her face and she said, pushing and shoving . It's so seldom she gets on the floor and we like it when she does, we can really show her how much we love her and so I figure Marley must be a good name.
Uh Oh my person is coming, I'm outta here, she seems to have a problem with me or Dorje touching or tasting or leaving toothmarks on her gadgets, next time I would like to give my view point on those hens and the barking and the would be intruders.......oh and the one with the noisy leg who seems to think I should listen to him....

Warts and all

A movie I watched last night was thought provoking. Nights In Rodanthe. It's about finding this perfect love, whereby 2 people being together become the best they can! I believe it's hard to find that but that it does happen , rarely, sometimes, maybe....If we all waited for that the world would certainly be less populated...but WoW what a world it would be. The movie was a real tear jerker because after unhappy marriages where the vibes were definitely off!! these 2 beautiful people found that but then one of them goes and dies .

An unrealistic notion, however the romantic, the perfectionist, the things are black or white in me wishes it could be so. Of course 2 of my favourite actors were those people in the movie, but life is not lived on a stage and we all think when we choose partners that we have that, however shit happens and one day we wake up and notice the prince or princess we thought we had has turned into a toad! in fact that both of us have become toads reacting off each other.

Of course it goes without saying that we are on a journey to find out about our buttons or warts and to do our best to grow as humans and eliminate them so that we have no buttons and that takes time and lots of effort... Often we remain with the toad and muddle thru, and they remain with us, their toad. And we try to see less of the warts because they are not too big, it is hard to walk away when the toad is not all toad and you remember the good times you shared and still do sometimes. And if we are both working towards no buttons it can be good

Sometimes the warts just get bigger and so we have to move on because to remain would end in us becoming less because if those buttons we are still working on eliminating continually get pushed , progress can just be too hard, we are after all human .

I believe the greatest asset anyone can bring to a partnership is respect for each others little warts, when we discover them, after the first passion has gone as it usually does, and to allow their dignity and to be flexible and non judgemental. And that goes for all relationships whether it be a business, or personal relationship, or even just a tiny interaction, eyes meeting, a prince or a beggar . Respect for where that person is at and understanding for what brought them there, respect no matter how different they are to you.

Everyone wants happiness, its what we are all striving for , do you know anyone that doesn't want happiness. Some of us go about finding it in strange and negative ways , some are ill equipped to start with and just need a helping hand. I like the quote "Ihave learned that a man has the right to look down on somebody, only when he is helping him to get up" Gabriel Garcia Marquez

And yes it is hard to let it go when someone seems just plain nasty and you want to cry out in hurt or lash out and hurt them too, however if we dont feel forgiveness we can have compassion.

I've done both lashed out and more lately the passion has been turned into compassion for them and for me also, because we are here to learn and the sooner we stop reacting to the pressing of our buttons the happier we can be. I think I was born with big buttons and the others are there to teach me, so now i try to cool off before reacting with fed up, pissed off, anxiety and whatever other out of control feelings arise, sometimes it works and I dont mean suppressing or allowing someone to act badly towards me, in those situations you need to set boundaries, its just finding equinimity for me and remembering the person saying, doing hurtful things has lots more lessons to come! Kharma is like that.

So when you come across the others be glad for they help you to grow and it gets some kharma out of the way that you wont have to deal with again, and next time round you just may meet the prince or princess with little tiny teeny warts and have less of them yourself.

Getting back to the movie the actor is Richard Gere and on one of my Buddhist Dharma dvd's he speaks and he says whenever he goes down the road he looks at everyone and as he comes near he says in his mind may you be happy, may you be happy and I have tried that and it is true it makes you feel happy .

Of course none of this is meant to be derogatory towards toads, cane or otherwise, I love frogs and toads and snakes and spiders they all have a place and if you believe in reincarnation that cane toad you think you should hate may be your mother next time around......and so you better treat it with respect or it will come back and bite you .......

life with 4 legged friends & rainforest creatures

Spoke to my niece today , she is surrounded by water, floods have cut yamba off and so she misses school, said she was a bit bored, got me thinking about a time when we lived in Devon , the snow came on christmas day, how thrilling , white christmas! the snow kept coming, then it froze, trees were creaking under the weight, had to climb out a window to remove it from around the door to open it . The scene outside was beautiful for someone from oz . Cranked up the central heating and went to the picture perfect Woolfardisworthy pub with husband and toddlers for lunch, the boy and girl. Everyone was in jovial christmas snow mood, then the power went out ......We had one fireplace in the very large lounge that used to be a cow byre, but of course the wood was under snow, frozen solid by now. So husband had the job of getting some of it indoors, and me the great fire maker spent a lot of the day trying to do just that, eventually I did get it going .

So that word again ..boredom seemed to be attacking the boy and girl. Husband, electrical draughtsman who should know about this stuff, rigged up our tv to the car battery and with a very loud bang and a few startled screams the tv was cactus. What is it about tradesman, when it comes to working on their own stuff all commonsense seems to fly away. Came close to being electrocuted a couple of nights ago when I chased an awful smell that had been hovering in the kitchen to the cooker, so husband removed the back as requested, and then left me to find the source of the smell , which I did poor dead mouse, almost touched it but decided to put rubber gloves on first while of course saying mantras for its future and hopefully better rebirth, just about to touch it again when the now not very popular husband he is one of the others mentioned the wires it was attached to were live, luckily for him his deafness muffled some of the most colourful language I used , language that he often asks if I picked up at the private boarding school I attended in south africa, which of course is not true, there was no way those sort of words could ever enter the cloistered environment we inhabited, no the words now in my vocab took me many years of our 33 year marriage to aquire and I might add as a direct result of it ! still not sure if he was trying to be rid of me, the one who expects a little help every now and then with the 2 dogs, 5 cats, 8 hens, 2 fish, nearly an acre of rainforest and grounds , pythons that insist on nesting in the chook house, gutters that often have leaves, very high gutters that the husband with menieres, a hearing disorder that causes at times dizziness and drop attacks cannot reach, so I have overcome my fear of heights, a good thing. and add to that chauffeur duty as he is unable to drive due also to menieres.

Back to Devon, our little village was completely cut off, so when thoughts of food returned we got what we could from the tiny village shop , and walked in this magnificent space with the trees creaking, to the mushroom farm and then the egg farm where the farmers wife asked if the girl and boy would like to see the animals. Of course they would, they always loved 4 legged creatures and had tiddles and tubs 2 kittens at home, will explain how they came to be part of the family later. The hens were in a barn with sheep and a cow and a couple of pigs, can only try to describe what the smell was like, at first confronting but as you got used to it, earthy and real and this warm fug and like life, some good notes and some absolutely not . My children are vegetarians and i think the first close up sight of all these lovely creatures that they had only seen in the distance before, huddling together for warmth, and me explaining what usually happens to farm animals may have had some influence in their decisions .(of course a big no no in the seventies when vegetarians were considered odd if not a little mad) thankfully open minded clever people accept vegeterianism today as a perfectly normal choice, however have still come across the others even today in this new century, but mad is not so bad, we all have some of that in us whether we admit it or not.