Today I took the dogs to the vet. Teddy was scheduled for an annual exam and Max was there for a 6-month check-up to confirm he is indeed negative for heart worm. A lot of street dogs from the South have to be re-tested so that any immature female worms who weren’t detectable on the initial test upon rescue (and who won’t respond to preventative) haven’t been there all along setting up camp so to speak. Fortunately, there is now good treatment for heart worm in the event that he has it, but it’s a lengthly process so we’re of course hoping to avoid it. Fingers crossed.

But the most important part of the visit was a completely non-medical event. After I’d wrangled each pooch onto the scale, sat with them briefly in the lobby (where we did some focus training), and got settled in the exam room, both dogs were incredibly calm. That’s a big win for any pet owner. Max took up investigating the perimeter with his nose. But Teddy…..fell asleep.

He was so deeply out of it he was snoring, which in his case makes him sound like an asthmatic piglet on the adventure of a lifetime.

There he was on the chair next to me, in dreamland at the vet, which has never happened, not once in the 2 years we’ve had him. Teddy has only ever trembled like a spin cycle on my lap or in my arms, except when he had to be given to the techs to go In The Back for blood draws and vaccines, in which case he has attempted to turn his 10.5 lb body into a magnet that would stick to only me.

I was in the middle of responding to the vet tech’s query if there was anything I wanted to talk to the vet about specifically? When I heard Teddy’s REM snort. I looked over at the sleeping loaf by my side, said, “Well that’s new,” and completely lost my train of thought.

It’s clear he feels completely safe with Max. Over the last six months we’ve experienced so much joy watching them become known to each other as pack mates do. They’ve learned how to read their signals for play, how to give each other space, how to feel safe cuddling. Teddy used to hate when we went out and left him behind. He barely notices now.

We can all learn from this.

Out there Life is still lifing, in ways that are filled with horror and disappointment, upstaging quieter signs of hope and cyclical renewal. My intuition tells me to sit still and be patient, which I am not, and which I am offended by on the hard days, to be honest. Especially when I see pictures out of Gaza or read national headlines. It makes me want to stay in bed glued to my phone, or go back to bed at some point during the day. Or it catapults me out of my bed at 2am when I’m anxious and can’t fall back sleep.

But I do listen. I not only listen, I hear the messages in every cell. I get up in the mornings, I stay out of bed during daylight hours, and I return to bed in the wee hours of the hard nights. I return to my partner, asleep with our beloved four-legged bodhisattvas.

Max and Teddy don’t have opposable thumbs, or phones, or any responsibility for the abject cruelty of the current regime. They don’t know anything about what’s going on. But they are showing us what’s possible when we hang together. There is power in the smallest of communities. Because even at the place where they stick you with needles and there is so much stimuli you can’t ever let your guard down completely, where the energy of animals who are sick and in pain and scared permeate the entire building, if you have a special friend with you, all is well.

Some days the big picture needs to get a whole lot bigger for me to feel the Universal guidance that arrives in all our hearts, and I feel the pain of it all until I find myself in it. But while I wait I watch the tiny pack Max and Teddy have formed, and how they’re both better for it, and it makes me feel strong enough to go back out into the world, ever listening for direction to the highest good for the greatest number, and create that bond for everyone.