SOAP BOX COMP-It's a dog's life
Sitting with my friend Crocker and Spike in my caged home, when two humans came up to me and asked a lady if I was available for adoption. The lady said 'She just arrived here yesterday'. The two humans told the lady they would be interested in adopting me. When the two humans were filling out the adoption form, the male looked at me and said 'I hope you like skiing, you sure are built for it!'. What does that mean?, I asked myself. What is 'SKIING?'. My life before I came to live with my friends in this cage was in a 30 foot by 30 foot yard and I was placed in this cage because I just wanted to roam and feel as free as a dog can in the middle of the city.
The first day they took me 'skiing', they loaded planks of painted wood attached with metal contraptions and asked me to jump in the back of the truck. When we got to our destination, it was snowing like crazy and the snow was up to my neck. When they strapped the planks of painted wood to their shiny plastic boots, we started walking uphill in the snow. Where are we going? This snow is deep but these are my new friends so I better keep up. We walked for a long time, but my friends were making me a trail to make it easier for me to walk with them. 'I must be pretty important to have them make a trail just for me'. I followed them beaming with pride.
When we got to the top of a mountain, I assumed we were going to walk down the trail they made for me. Then my male friend started going down this steep chute on his painted planks of wood. His planks allowed him to turn in the snow as he shifted his body weight left and right. It was so quiet, the planks never even made any noise. Then, my female friend looked at me and I just let my extincts take over as I leapt over the small dropoff and just kept jumping down the steep slope as I tried to catch up to my friend. As I got closer to him, he kept encouraging me to keep coming to him and when I caught up to him he hugged and congratulated me. Then I turned to look up at my female friend who had just started down the mountain. I could see the smile on her face from where we were waiting and when she caught up to us, she told me how proud she was for how I skied. Skied? That was the word my new male friend used when I first met him. What does that mean? To me I just did what felt natural to me; my extincts just took over. My male friend's eyes just fixed to mine and I could tell he was trying to tell me 'that is what skiing is my friend. It is a natural extension of the being interacting with nature just like your instincts'. I knew immediately by our exchanged look that we were going to rely on our natural instincts a lot in this activity they call 'skiing'. And, although my legs were pretty tired after my first day, I had this feeling this was what my being was meant to: something that was missing in my life before I met my new friends. I am sure there will be more to come. Better get a good night sleep tonight because we could go again tomorrow...