Neither of us is truly comfortable but neither of us moves.
He is on my lap, sprawled across
my thighs, his legs already a little long and dangling down the side of the chair. He’s settled his chin on my right arm, right in the crook of my elbow, his head tilted sharply upward just to keep in contact with me.
To type, I must strain to pull my trapped arm up and just over the desktop onto the keyboard, with only my fingers able to move freely, and my body leaning precariously. We’re both working to hold on to each other, to keep the gossamer of contact that says we are going to intertwine our fates ~ or they are already intertwined.
We named him Finnegan. We found him at a local shelter, in a cage among dozens of cages, in a room among a dozen rooms, all filled with dogs who we could just as easily have taken home. I remember the moment I knew it would be Finnegan.
He leaned. Outside of his cage, on the tabletop where germ-carrying humans were allowed to interact with the sick dogs, he wagged, his ears flopped around his tiny face, he coughed long bursts of coughs, and he leaned against my chest, at table height, his face tucked into my armpit.
Well, that was that.
Passage from “Inside of a Dog” ~ by Alexandra Horowitz
Photo compliments of ~ Tickled Pink Weimaraner Rescue
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