Delly is always on a leash. She doesn’t run free like some dogs. In our dreams we picture her leash-less and sticking where she should and how sweet it is seeing a dog strutting alongside Mr. Owner all obedient and smart. But that’s not her. One time she lunged into the street mindlessly chasing something and the end of the leash caught her just as a car charged past. Clueless.
We don’t take her for a walk, we take her for a scrounge. One time after an x-ray the vet said she had pebbles and a nickel in her tummy. That’s all? Every twenty feet during a walk she’s rooting or lunging at who-knows-what in the grass. She has a t-shirt that says, “Eat the whole world – let the stomach sort it out!” Occasionally she darts out the door or gate but she never goes far – foraging is slow work.
One day she got loose and we couldn’t find her. Thirty minutes later she comes sauntering around the corner. I knew what that meant. She had had her fill. She came from the direction of the nearby pond – that’s where she finds the delicacies of duck and goose poop. Again, clueless.
The next day she‘s totally sick. Both ends. Twelve hours. She doesn’t clean up her own mess and has no idea how freedom and consequences are connected. Sometimes indulging the freedom others have has a cost…
Maybe God’s doing me a favor when he doesn’t give me liberty to do some things I see others doing that seem so normal and make so much sense. It’s easy to think, “Why can’t I do that like everybody else?” But freedom for you might be fine in the same area where for me it would be trouble. (We’re not talking sin, here.)
At the end of the leash, I never know the commotion or distraction or torment or hot water I’m spared. I only think about the part I know, or imagine – the good stuff I don’t want to miss.