'Let's play ball': My Dog is teaching me how to enjoy life

I have been corresponding by email with a friend of mine from Cape Girardeau, Mo. We got to talking about dogs because she loves dogs and she dogsat my dog when I went on a trip a few years ago. I told her my dog, Meli, a wonderful black lab mix who weighs about 65 pounds, was an apartment dog. She asked me if she had free roam of the apartment. Some people who leave dogs home all day keep them in a crate. I am posting my response to her today.

"Oh, she has free roam of the apartment all right. This morning when I went back to get some stuff out of my refrigerator to bring to work, Meli had gotten the box of individual oatmeal  packages off the counter and onto the floor and had made her way through one of them. She does this all the time.

"She especially likes it when I forget to put the sugar in the cabinet and leave it on the counter. That's always fun to clean up. That happened Friday. As the other time, I returned to the apartment for something and caught her before she could eat all of it or most of it.

"She would have eaten all eight or so of the oatmeals if I had not caught her. She's bad. Usually she just sleeps on my bed when I'm at work, I think. I have an old bedspread I cover the bed with so when I go to bed I don't have to be quite so close to the smell of her feet.

"But I can hardly imagine life without her. Last night I told the story about how I tend to tell her no a lot of the time about playing ball every instant, such as first thing in the morning when I'm trying to have a few minutes of quiet time, when I'm on the phone, when I'm using the bathroom. But all of a sudden I got the revelation that I should be more like her, waking up and wanting to play ball. She enjoys life. I have a lot to learn from her.

"Wow. 17 1/2 years old. That's amazing. I've never heard of a dog that old. Those shots must be expensive, but, of course, they're worth it when they're one of your family. Great Pyrenees and Rottweiler lap puppies sounds fun. Meli doesn't do the lap thing. She just runs around all the time wagging her tail, and she puts her head up on the bed and sticks it under the covers so I will pet her and then she licks me.

I'm trying to teach her to let me hug her but she doesn't like to be hugged too much, she just sits there briefly and looks into my eyes and then mostly wants to lick. It's a little bit much at times, but that's the way she expresses affection. Then she just goes and gets her ball. It's kind of like, 'OK, here's a little hug, if you insist, let's play ball.'"

I decided the other day to wake up wanting to play ball every day, like my dog. Say, for example, get up praising God for another day and having a playful attitude about life instead of the attitude I usually have. I don't have time to go into it right now, but I think you know what I mean.

For example, I have a terrible cold that hit me Friday night. First the sore throat, then the nasal congestion. Next day more congestion. Today, moving up higher and lower and can't taste food. You know the routine. And I overslept. Woke up at 7:22 and I have to be at work at 8:00. So do I call in? Can't call in. The insurance assessor for the guy who hit my car two weeks ago is supposed to come look at my car. I need to be at work. Fortunately, it's a slow day at work, but I need to be here for that. So what do I do? I go to work, of course.

Now that the dog has deposited the message of  "Let's play ball" in my spirit, it won't go away. And I think that's a good thing, I think. The people who publish devotions would probably object to the trite comparison of my dog with effecting an attitude change, but that's OK. It blesses me. Hope it blesses you.