A journey ends where it began 緣起緣落
I never liked dogs. To say it more precisely I was totally afraid of dogs. In my mind, dogs meant dirty, germs and most importantly, they bite. It was a wet afternoon after a often-seen thunderstorm of any summer days in Taipei, a huge German Shepard came out of no where to chase me on my way home from a extracurricular class. I was about 8 or 10. I was also tiny and skinny in my age. A small umbrella, the kind of one kids use, was the only thing I had in my hands to beat off that German Shepard's sharp teeth. I screamed out of my lung and waved the umbrella crazily to fight for my life. Finally, an adult came by and rescued me from the horror. From that day, I had fear for dogs.
Tim knew well that I hated dogs when he married me. He had seen enough my paranoid moments with dogs before he proposed. He once said to me that a dog makes a family complete and happy. I knew he was begging for one. It was the year of 2003, I felt I can't forever say no to dogs for the sake of the fact that I have married to a man who grew up with two dogs and still have tears in his eyes when he talked about them. My heart couldn't take one more that sad puppy dog eye look he cast to me whenever we saw a dog. One day I crisply announced" "I am ready!". "Ready for what?" Tim puzzled. "OK, we can get a dog." I confirmed with a secret hope that it may come to me to like dogs later but not now yet. As for Tim, my "permission" was like a merciful rain after long drought although he had a good amount of doubts in me until now.
Before we saw a classified in the Dallas Morning News said " English Cocker Spaniel puppies for sale", we had tried to contact with several reputable breeders in Texas but all ended with no lucks - mostly due to breeders had no litters avaiable at that moment or at any time soon. So, we gave this ad a daring try.
Squarky was born in a nice ranch home in Waco Texas. When we saw him, he was the last one standing in his litter. His breeder kept a pack of his kind as family pets as well as handy hunting companions. Squarky might sense that he was the last one standing and we came here for him so that he pretty much squirmed up right away from where he rested to Tim's front arm when we reached out to him. That was a clever move as Tim's heart was instantly melted and the decesion was already made. From the day one, Squarky was a brown-noser of genius.
We made a second trip to go back to bring Squarky home when he was old enough to come home with us. It was such a special day that we will never forget, not only because it was Tim's birthday (Squarky was Tim's birthday present), but we knew that this blue-eye little furry thing was going to count on us to the end of his life. This is not it yet. Speaking today from a hindsight, what we did not expect then was that we were bringing home a special comforting angel who was going to change our life and bless us greatly.
