My friends, it has been too long.

Technology is supposed to make our lives better and easier, right? Lately, well actually more like the last 10 years, I find technology and interacting with it exhausting and full of stress and frustration. A better and easier life? Hardly, when hours are spent trying to determine why this site completely shut down on me months ago. If I were tech savvy, the fix might have been a breeze but I am not and so here we are, my friend. Here. We. Are.

Last night I took my favorite animal in the world, our dog, Lucky Boo Boo, out for her evening potty. Her collar was not on tight enough and so when she stepped outside, she also stepped right out of her collar and leash.

During the day, she has our entire yard to herself, to run as fast and free as she wants.

At night? We learned that all of the smells of the day rile her up and she goes crazy, barking at everything. I don’t want a phone call from an irate neighbor about our insane pooch at 10 o’clock at night, so….leash it is for her at night.

So last night, she stepped right out of her collar and leash and in a literal flash, was gone. Her collar is tied to our invisible fence, and her training stops her from leaving, so I was not worried we would lose her. I just knew the barking and smelling and running would begin in 3….2… yep, there’s the first bark.

Instead of yelling at her (no better than her barking) I just stood right outside my back door and watched. I could hear her smelling the ground, not only through her nose, but inhaling so deeply that I heard her jowls flapping; it was a like she was smelling with her nose, her taste buds, and her tongue. Someone listening would have thought a wild pig was running through our backyard! Her snout was smelling, I am sure, the deer which pass through our yard on a daily basis; I imagine the pheromone trails left behind by deer is like caffeine to her sniffer.

Previous months I would yell at her and chase her around the yard and try and get her back inside, only to fail, fail, FAIL in a big way because my yelling was adding to the noise which I’m sure my neighbors just loooooooove. Finally, I learned to put her on a leash because then I can control her and there’s less barking and way less yelling.

But not last night. For some reason, all I could do last night was smile and chuckle watching her be her crazy self.

We live on 2.6 acres and she literally ran around our house four times, ran across our backyard at least 10 times, ran to the front yard and back three times, ran to the farthest reaches of every corner of her invisible fence at least five times….all of this running she did, without stopping (no joke) over about 15 minutes. She ran and smelled and barked and yelped and then ran some more and then barked and then stopped and looked at me, asking, “Why aren’t you yelling at me?!” and then ran some more.

And then she ran some more.

And pretty soon she slowed down.

And eventually I said, “Lucky….come.”

And she did come inside.

And she got lots of treats and kisses for being such a good girl.

And then she drank her entire bowl of water.

And then ran upstairs, jumped on my bed, curled up and within 3 nanoseconds was sound asleep.

All I could do was smile.

She does what all pets do, to all of us, she makes me pause, and just be.

And when I do, I think, what is making her smell like that? WHAT does she smell? Why is she howling? What is she saying? And whom is she talking to?

And I am in awe of this incredible creature that I get to spend my life with.

Instead of yelling and choosing, instead, to just watch, I grew to love her more because I saw her for her. Her genes, her DNA, her instinct, her heart telling her to do all of that crazy stuff and bark and be loud and get it all out of her system. Just get it out.

This crazy dog makes me laugh. And she makes me love.

I wish technology did this for our lives, made us laugh and love and pause and watch and question and then accept. All it does is make me pause and cuss and yell and want to punch and scream and throw devices as hard as I can across the room so they will shatter into a million pieces. Man, would that feel good. Give me a moment while I think about that…oooh, that does feel good.

I digress.

Why can’t I just pause when technology doesn’t work… just pause, instead of reacting. Maybe then I could focus and really fix it. But I don’t. I just get mad. And then stomp away. And then not fix my blog for months because I don’t know how and I need help and I hate asking for help but I need it. And so finally I ask for help and here I am. If I treated technology like I treated my dog, months ago I would have just walked away from my computer, let it do its thing, and when it got tired, I’d open it back up and everything would work. I might even give it a nice pet and say, “Good computer, good job!”

But nope, that is not how it all unfolded. So tomorrow, I’m going to throw my device against a brick wall and then go out and adopt another dog and be a whole hell of a lot happier.

Moral of the story? Dogs, people, DOGS make our lives not only better but fuller.

Dogs.

Amen.