Reminders

Sometimes it's good to be reminded of what the important things in life are.  My good friend Morgan, whom I have never met, reminded me today of how tenuous our hold on life really is, and how we need to really focus on what's real and good in our lives before they disappear forever.  Another good friend, Amy, reminded me that I haven't shared some photos of one of the really good things in my life, our guide dog, Pandora.

Pandora is a five-year-old yellow Labrador retriever.  She came to live with us a little over three years ago from the Guide Dog School in San Rafael, California.  Since then, she has traveled with us to Maine, Alaska, Tennessee, and Southern California.  She has traveled by plane, boat, train, bus and car and done it all with aplomb. 

She loves to go in the car, it doesn't matter where we're going.  It can be up to Lake Tahoe, or just to the gas station.  As long as she's going somewhere, she's happy. 

While she was in training, her puppy-raiser was required to take her everywhere she would have to go as a guide dog, to restaurants, the library, the mall, you name it.  The one thing that she never learned as a puppy was that she already knows how to swim.  She loves running around and splashing in the water, but she has no idea that she can walk through it without lifting her paws out of it, or that she was born to swim, as well as to guide.

We still hold out hope that one day she will get the hang of it.