Just yesterday, I took this photo of her on the mountain. She is lying in the red Karoo dirt, surrounded by fynbos, Gwarrie trees and the Swartberg range stretching out behind her like something from another age.
She looks like she was born there.
She wasn’t.
We don’t know her full story.
We know she was a police dog.
We know she was rescued.
We adopted her from the SPCA, with help from Powerful breeds Karen Borain just before she turned 2
We know she’s an Empath, too sensitive for police work.
We know she loves food.
We know that somewhere in the life before this one, someone taught her that raised hands mean pain. She flinches still, Sometimes. But less than she used to. The mountain is working on that.
When we named her, I chose her name for its frequency. Saydee carries the number twenty three in her name, the royal star of courage.
Brave dogs in the police force get medals. They get stars.
She left that world without hers.
So I gave her one the only way I know how, woven into the name she would hear every day for the rest of her life.
Saydee.
Royal star.
Courage frequency.
This sweet dog has earned it. Every single day.
On our afternoon walks, she moves around the small ones like water around stones.
She is ahead and then behind and then alongside. She checks Riley and Lucy in the stroller with her nose, a brief, gentle touch and moves on. She circles back to Molly Joy and Daisy Moon when they wander too far. She keeps the shape of the pack without being asked. Without being commanded.
Nobody trained her for this. This is just, who she chooses to be, on the other side of everything she was trained to be.
The Swartberg watches all of it. It has seen stranger miracles than this.
She has also decided she is small.
Every evening she folds her full and considerable self onto the couch with the confidence of a dog who is absolutely certain she belongs there.
All of her.
Ears. Legs. The magnificent tail.
Every last golden centimetre.
Little Lucy who can behave like a grumpy old lady, has plenty opinions about this. Saydee has not noticed.
Then there is the broccoli. I don’t know how to explain Saydee and broccoli except to say that it is one of the purest relationships I have ever witnessed. The moment the knife touches the head of a broccoli, she is in the kitchen. She does not ask.
She does not beg.
She simply arrives.
Sits.
And looks at you with that steady Malinoise stare and focus of the one who has decided, once and for all, that good things come.
I think about what she was built for. The training. The commands. The very specific shape she was pressed into before she had a choice. And then I look at her, asleep on the couch, four stick-like legs in the air, completely and magnificently undignified and I think, maybe none of us are ONLY what we were trained to be. Maybe the lives we were always going to live, simply waits on the other side of the one we were handed.
For Saydee, it looks like a mountain now ,instead of a harsh policing world, it looks like four small dogs who never question her right to be among them, and maybe, sometimes, it looks like broccoli on a Wednesday night.
Walk with me.
There is more to tell.
SharynAnn
Just yesterday, I took this photo of her on the mountain. She is lying in the red Karoo dirt, surrounded by fynbos, Gwarrie trees and the Swartberg range stretching out behind her like something from another age.
She looks like she was born there.
She wasn’t.
We don’t know her full story.
We know she was a police dog.
We know she was rescued.
We adopted her from the SPCA, with help from Powerful breeds Karen Borain just before she turned 2
We know she’s an Empath, too sensitive for police work.
We know she loves food.
We know that somewhere in the life before this one, someone taught her that raised hands mean pain. She flinches still, Sometimes. But less than she used to. The mountain is working on that.
When we named her, I chose her name for its frequency. Saydee carries the number twenty three in her name, the royal star of courage.
Brave dogs in the police force get medals. They get stars.
She left that world without hers.
So I gave her one the only way I know how, woven into the name she would hear every day for the rest of her life.
Saydee.
Royal star.
Courage frequency.
This sweet dog has earned it. Every single day.
On our afternoon walks, she moves around the small ones like water around stones.
She is ahead and then behind and then alongside. She checks Riley and Lucy in the stroller with her nose, a brief, gentle touch and moves on. She circles back to Molly Joy and Daisy Moon when they wander too far. She keeps the shape of the pack without being asked. Without being commanded.
Nobody trained her for this. This is just, who she chooses to be, on the other side of everything she was trained to be.
The Swartberg watches all of it. It has seen stranger miracles than this.
She has also decided she is small.
Every evening she folds her full and considerable self onto the couch with the confidence of a dog who is absolutely certain she belongs there.
All of her.
Ears. Legs. The magnificent tail.
Every last golden centimetre.
Little Lucy who can behave like a grumpy old lady, has plenty opinions about this. Saydee has not noticed.
Then there is the broccoli. I don’t know how to explain Saydee and broccoli except to say that it is one of the purest relationships I have ever witnessed. The moment the knife touches the head of a broccoli, she is in the kitchen. She does not ask.
She does not beg.
She simply arrives.
Sits.
And looks at you with that steady Malinoise stare and focus of the one who has decided, once and for all, that good things come.
I think about what she was built for. The training. The commands. The very specific shape she was pressed into before she had a choice. And then I look at her, asleep on the couch, four stick-like legs in the air, completely and magnificently undignified and I think, maybe none of us are ONLY what we were trained to be. Maybe the lives we were always going to live, simply waits on the other side of the one we were handed.
For Saydee, it looks like a mountain now ,instead of a harsh policing world, it looks like four small dogs who never question her right to be among them, and maybe, sometimes, it looks like broccoli on a Wednesday night.
Walk with me.
There is more to tell.
SharynAnn
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