Sibling Assignment #92: Snug

Silver Valley Girl posted a sweet assignment for us to work on:

Write a poem, essay, song, story about one of you pets, and how having that pet has made your life better.

She assigned it, but she has not squeezed time in between track meets, a spaghetti feed, play going, play auditioning, career day at the middle school, and a 1001 other demands to write it just yet. But the every faithful, reliable, and steady (I thought those were the traits of the oldest child...where did I go wrong?) InlandEmpireGirl posted a poem devoted to her Springer Spaniel Annie. It's here.

It's hard for me to write only laudable words about my Springer Spaniel, Snug. He makes life difficult. He's a very protective dog. If he's unsure about a person coming into Mom's house or our house, if a person bends down to pet him, he feels threatened. He lunges. He bites.

Similarly, when I walk him in the neighborhood, he cannot abide other dogs to walk close to him. He growls at them, sometimes leaps straight up in the air on the leash. He wants to protect me as well as himself.

I can't take Snug to the dog park anymore. When dogs come around to sniff him, he stiffens up and turns on the dogs, pins them to the ground. He doesn't really bite them. He slobbers them. But it's frightening, for me and the other dog owners. It's a shame. Snug loves the open spaces in the dog park. He loves to run and, once he feels comfortable, he loves to play chase with other dogs.

It's the feeling comfortable part that's hard for Snug, at home when the doorbell rings, around the neighborhood on the leash, and with other dogs at the park.

But then there's the Snug I spend hours with at home. He's relaxed, at peace, restful, affectionate, a comfort.



When Snug is relaxed, when he's calm, when he's with me in our protected little world, he is the epitome of restful presence.

I don't know if Snug has a sense that a past has happened or that future is to come. When he's pressed against my shins or licking my face or licking his paws or turning on his back so I can rub his stomach or staring peacefully at me, he is completely present in that moment, an example of how I might be, enjoying the pleasant sensations of the moment I'm in, letting my regrets of the past and worries of the future go.

I'm grateful to Snug for the pleasure he derives from our hugs, from his licking me, from me petting him, and from his habit of pressing against me when I'm lying in bed.

I can't measure his pleasure, but if it's half of what mine is, then in these moments protected from past and future, locked in the present, we experience sheer bliss.