We got Spikey back in 1994. We got him because he was smart enough to figure out how to drag my tennis shoe through the metal gate and into his cage. I promised the kids if he could do it, we’d get him. He grabbed the shoelace, pulled it toward him, then with a last tug, got the whole shoe under the gate. We called him Spike because his cute little Westie ears stuck straight up. Spikey never had a crabby second in his whole life. Whenever you’d turn your attention toward him, his little butt would start wriggling, work its way up through his whole body, and his tongue would be out, ready to lick your hand because he loved you so much, whoever you were.
A year and a half ago I noticed he couldn’t quite make it around our whole block on our nightly walk. He’d make it 3/4 of the way, then just lie down in the grass and wait. I’d pick him up, and cuddling, walk the rest of the way home. I didn’t mind - he was light, and he was my Spikey puppy. Then he couldn’t make it even down to the end of the block, so that’s what we’d do. Walk to the end of the block and back. He still loved the sound of the leash jingling, the promise of happy times. Finally he could only walk outside and back in, his head down. He stopped barking. I left for Arizona with Dad, and one night Bill called and asked if I was done for the day. I told him yes. He told me Spikey had died in his sleep last night. They found him curled peacefully around the food dish. I didn’t cry - it’s not that I didn’t love him, I did, I do, it’s just that he was 15 years old, and it was time for him to go on to his next grand adventure. His other half, Rusty, our 16 year old Airedale, we thought would go first. But a year later, Rusty is still (barely) holding on. He can hardly even stand up, can’t see or hear, his ear hurts, he has arthritis, and he used to bark all night. Steve lets him out, nudging him gently with a fly swatter because he can’t get going. Steve cleans up the laundry room that gets messy, talks sweetly to Rusty, his sweet dog. Rusty won’t go - he loves Steve too much.
I’m not a mean person, but I’m tired of being woken up 3 or 4 times every night with him barking. But last night I slept all the way through. At first I couldn’t figure it out - I was just happy to have slept. Then I got it - Rusty’s still alive, but he’s stopped barking. I feel that way sometimes - like I’m just too damned tired to bark anymore - I just want to get going on to my next grand adventure here on Earth, I want things to transform, to move forward. I put my head down, unable to speak up anymore. It’s just too much. I noticed yesterday that I have a constant low level of anxiety all the time now, but it’s not ‘real’ so I remember what I told a client a couple of weeks ago. We go through energy cycles - we are ‘normal’ then we start receiving higher frequency energy into our bodies. While that’s happening, we can get overly excited, can’t sleep, can’t think straight. When we get saturated, we are at the peak of acceptance at that moment (like a sponge), and we feel anxiety throughout our body as it works to integrate this new energy. When we have sufficiently integrated enough of the energy, we start to feel that wonderful, calm, expanded feeling that comes with the higher frequencies - our body is now more expanded, higher energy, more conscious and upgraded. Then we may get tired as we rest up for the next cycle to start. And it does - all over again.
So we are like Spikey and Rusty, only finishing one ‘life’ here on earth to start again, right here. We don’t die - just those lower parts of ourselves ‘die,’ as we travel ever upward. It’s kind of like learning math - in the beginning 2 + 2 is new and magical, after a while we forget about it in the midst of the higher equations. So maybe it’s okay that my ‘dog’ has stopped barking for now. There may not be anything to say at this point. Just sit and be. Sit.