Every first Wednesday of the month at precisely 11:00 a.m., a wolf begins to howl from several miles away. Without fail, our dear Rose interrupts her slumber, or her squirrel monitoring, or her sniff patrol to let him know he is not alone.
She does it because her people have always done it. It’s obvious when you listen—she uses the ancient voice that waits in her bones. When she hears the wolf who needs answering, her whole body responds. She throws back her head, squeezes her eyes half-closed, and gives in to the prehistoric pull. For those precious 3 minutes, she stops scanning for the sound of kibble being poured into her dish, she’s not trying to find a way under the porch to put the fear of Dog into those stinking chipmunks, she’s not even worrying about What if just this once they don’t open the door when I scratch to come in? (She’d been returned twice to the shelter where we got her and hasn’t been able to shake her abandonment issues.)
After 8 years of trying to connect with that wolf, Rose never seems to take it personally that he doesn’t come over. And when he reaches out to her again tomorrow, I’m pretty sure she’ll take his call.
With Rose’s howling on my mind this morning, I made myself a list of activities that stir me to the bone, making me forget where I am. And today I’m going to find time to do one of them.
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Be engaged, but be nice.