Chicken Soup for the Cat & Dog Lover's Soul by Jack Canfield

Author:Jack Canfield [Canfield, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Book, ebook
ISBN: 9780757396809
Publisher: Health Communications, Inc.
Published: 2010-08-31T07:00:00+00:00

Obedience

For seven years my father, who was not yet old enough to retire, had been battling colon cancer. Now he was dying. He could no longer eat or even drink water, and an infection had forced him into the hospital. I sensed that he hated being in the hospital, but he hardly complained. That wasn’t his way.

One night when he had no luck summoning a nurse, and tried to reach the bathroom on his own, he fell and gashed his head on the nightstand. When I saw his wounded head the next day, I felt my frustration and helpless anger rise. Why isn’t there anything I can do? I thought, as I waited for the elevator. As if in answer to my prayers, when the elevator opened, two dogs greeted me.

Dogs? In a hospital? Personally, I couldn’t think of a better place for dogs, but I was shocked that the city laws and hospital codes allowed it.

“How did you get to bring dogs here?” I asked the owner, as I stepped in.

“They’re therapy dogs. I take them up to the sixth floor once a week, to meet with the patients in rehab.”

An idea grew stronger and stronger as I walked out of the hospital and to my car. My dad had bought a springer spaniel named Boots for my mom for a Christmas present a few years before. My mother had insisted that she wanted a dog, and it had to be a spaniel. My dad had explained this to me when he asked me to go for a ride with him to pick out a puppy.

When he picked up a wriggly kissy puppy, I saw the tension ease from my father’s face. I realized the genius of my mother’s plan immediately. The dog was not for her; it was for him. Brilliantly, she asked for a spaniel so he could have the breed of dog he’d always wanted, and never had, when he was a boy.

By then, all of us kids had moved away from home. So Boots also became the perfect child my father never had. She was an eager, loving and obedient pal for him.

Personally, I thought she was a little too obedient. Boots was not allowed on the bed or any other furniture, and she never broke this rule. Sometimes I wanted to tell my dad when he was at home lying on his sickbed, “Call Boots up here! She’ll give you love and kisses and touch you like I’m too restrained to do . . . and you need it.”

But I didn’t. And he didn’t. And Boots didn’t.

Instead, she sat near his bed, watching him protectively, as the months rolled by. She was always there, a loving presence as his strength ebbed away, till he could no longer walk or even sit up without help. Once in a while, he got very sick, and went to the hospital, and she awaited his return anxiously, jumping up expectantly every time a car pulled up to the house.

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