1st January 2014
Cassie The Blog Dog and I have just been for a walk. Cassie to burn off some her exuberant joie de vivre and me to burn off the calories and the after effects of last night’s plummy little Merlot. The sun was out, albeit a watery glow in the sky. I walked and she tore through the fields like a gazelle about to go into orbit. She is a joy to watch and I wish I had an nth of her va va voom.
Cassie seizes each and every day in her happy little paws. No challenge is too big, no blog is too small. She goes for it. If she gets hissed at by a cat, growled at by another dog, she is not phased by it. She doesn’t dwell on anything that happened one second ago, she lives for the here and now. Happiness is her credo. We should all take a leaf out of her book.
She arrived in our lives two years ago as a tiny pup.
I was going through a time of crisis.
Dogs have a way of finding people that need them ……
Filling an emptiness we don’t even know we have.
Thorn Jones
Leading up to Christmas 2013, I seemed to have completely lost all my va va voom. There was certainly no joie in my vivre and no spring in my step. I tried filling myself with vitamin supplements and Ginseng. I went on the wagon from Monday to Friday (well, sometimes Friday Eve). I started having long soaks in the bath by candlelight, with music playing softly in the background. Then, during one long soak, I got too close to one of the candles and set fire to my hair. It was then I realised that swallowing copious quantities of vitamins, giving up booze and long soaks in the bath was not helping me get my va va voom back.
I had made a bah humbug decision to stay at home with Cassie last night – New Year’s Eve 2013 – I didn’t see why she should be on her own anyway – to lick my emotional wounds. I told everybody that what I really needed was an early night, but the evening didn’t really go as planned. After a few hours in Cassie’s company and having watched a particularly uplifting Jools Holland Annual Hootenanny gig, we were both dancing round the living room feeling good to be alive. I raised several glasses of that plummy little Merlot to toast Cassie’s and my health and wealth in 2014. I made a few slurred phone calls to my nearest and dearest before falling up the stairs to bed at 3a.m. with a positive spring in my step and a resolution to start blogging again. I had finally realised, through my Merlot fug, that what I needed to do to get my head together was to get things off my chest. And today’s the day we start.
“The future depends on what you do today.” Mahatma Gandhi
Filed under: Dogs, Expect the Unexpected, Humour, Jersey, Life, Motivation, My life to date ... and how I've survived it, Wellbeing Tagged: Carpe diem, Cassie The Blog Dog, Seize the day
