The ones who rescue us...

After Tracker died, my soul left with him.  Sure I saved more dogs, sure I lived to take care of the ones I still had in my home, but my soul left with Tracker that night.  I became hard.  I didn't exactly know it at the time, or did I?  Earlier that day after I spent time with him at the emergency room, I met my friend for lunch, because it was her birthday, and I promised. I didn't want to be there with her, listening to her non-caring soul bitch at me for all the money I spent to keep Tracker alive thus far...and how he is "only" a dog, blah, blah, blah....  but in REALITY...she was right...if what the radiologist said was true, and he did have cancer, I would never have put him thru chemo.  Not if you saw what I saw on that Xray machine of his lungs.  I had to toss myself up to the Lord and said "so be it".  Take the one thing I loved most in my life.  Take him now.  Don't make him suffer.  And I let him go.  And I let myself go along with him.  I wanted to curl up in a ball and die to be with him again.  That is just plain pathetic...he was a dog.  Nope...he was "the one".  Or so I thought?  That was January 2007. 



Jim

 And life just sort of droaned on.  Then that fall, we grabbed a female and a male from northern WI shelters, and both landed at my house for some reason, when I gotta look at that male, I said to myself  "Oh no.... Tracker".  It was like from some where over "the rainbow" came this big galoof, who reminded me instantly of Tracker!  Oh God.... ok, get it outta your mind sister... so he went to another foster home, and I kept the female, who turned out to be the most obnoxious whiner there ever was...and this lemonhead pointer turned out to be a runner, who landed in jail less then 24-hrs later, costing us bail money.  Well, that was it...I switched foster dogs and took "the runner".  Me and Mr. Ecollar had a little training session with this one.  We hunt tested him, pass. Got vet work done, pass... potty trained... pass, found him a home, all good, all according to schedule.  And the entire time he was gone, in my head played "the Jimmy Back" song...ya know, "I want my Jimmy back...".  And when the guy returned him on about the 10th day, it so happened to be three days before what would have been Tracker's birthday, and I said this is a damn omen....I got my Jimmy back!  And he stayed.  He rescued me as it turns out.

He sleeps in bed with me, he guards me, he guards his house, he tolerates rescue dogs coming in and out, he loves "the girls", in general Jim is a big love boy.  If I'm in the shower, he waits on the other side of the door for me.  He watches where I go, what I do, where I am.  He is a little submissive and shy, but if someone were trying to attack me, I think he'd go for it.  This dog has WAY more personality then Tracker ever did.  This boy saved my soul.  And it happened so slowly, I never really realized, all the sudden I was not crying myself to sleep anymore for Tracker.  I just threw an arm over Jim and drift off to sleep, listening to the sound of HIS breathing.  (Trust me, sometimes I do feel like a traitor to Tracker.)  Whoever threw James away, probably never loved him like I do.  I always have this thought, that some day, some where, some way, some one will come up to me "hey!  I had a dog like that once".  I will have to punch them in the nose, no questions asked.  Their loss, MY gain, and truely, 'the gift' is all mine.  This dog, like so many before, and maybe others after, saved me.  Jim wears Tracker's tag that says "I rescued a human".



Jim, my guardian



 Indeed he has...