Since my dog Coco was lost in the woods for two days and two nights just a couple of weeks ago, which was quite an ordeal for both of us, he has aged significantly. I thought he was coming back, but suddenly every aging symptom he was demonstrating before has taken a serious downturn. A couple of days ago I finally realized he is stone, cold deaf – which wasn’t true just three or four weeks ago. No wonder we couldn’t find him in the woods, he couldn’t hear us calling. He has become so fragile and shaky that when he is sleeping I keep checking to make sure he is still breathing.

Soon I am leaving on a 17 day trip. A neighbor will stay at my house to care for him, but Coco always misses me when I’m not here. Badly. At dinner tonight with a brilliant young friend, Diedra, I was telling her how hard the thought of leaving him is. Later as we were parting at she said to me, “When you leave Coco just feel it in here, (she put her fist to her gut) and communicate to him that it’s a good trip for you, that you’re going to be so happy. That’s what he needs to know so he’ll be relaxed.” She’s genius. I might have been expressing how sorry I was to leave him and how much I will miss him, or some such thing which would obviously, now that she says that, be totally disquieting to him.

It made me think about what I am putting out to the universe in general. All of that responds to me in the same way my dog or a child would. What a wake up that was. Thanks, Diedra.