Dog Is My Co-Pilot.

I admit it, I stole this. But hell, I can't look at our dogs and not believe every single word of this.


This is an excerpt from the book "Dog Is My Copilot" (Three Rivers Press, ISBN 1-4000-5053-7). The author is Pam Houston. Enjoy...

LESSON #1 That if your paws are too big to fit in your ears, you have to get someone else to do the scratching.

LESSON #2 That if you want your hand to be licked, you might have to put it under somebody's nose.

LESSON #3 That the exact right dog will always come into your life just when you need him or her most.

LESSON #4 That loving in the face of inevitable loss, is the single most important challenge of our lives.

LESSON #5 That all your new habits. like weeping and praying and talking about your feelings, will actually endear you to more people than they will drive away.

LESSON #6 That sitting in the grass together doing nothing isn't really doing nothing at all.

LESSON #7 That if you love somebody deeply enough, cleaning up their diarrhea doesn't make you want to puke.

LESSON #8 That in the end, the money doesn't matter a bit.

LESSON #9 That sometimes, even if you haven't acted perfectly, the good thing happens after all.

LESSON #10 That everything is forgivable, that every moment contains eternity, and that loving unconditionally doesn't mean you are a self-annihilating fool.

"I ask (my dog) for a story to go with lesson #10, and he says in his Zen-ish way that there isn't one story that goes with this rule because they all do. He says that lesson #10 is what every dog has been trying to teach every human since the beginning of time."