El Oso Comes Home
This story is a copy/paste from comments I made on Facebook when asked how I ended up with a new puppy.
Wednesday afternoon, Oct. 24, a full moon, Stella says let’s take a walk after dinner. This is unusual because Stella is usually dog tired from her special ed teaching. We walk down Loma Parda Rd. and bump into Stella’s hairdresser and her friend. The hairdresser tells us someone dropped off a puppy and it’s sitting there at the Arrey school (a long-abandoned site overgrown with weeds and broken glass… Stella’s grandfather, whose adobe house we’re living in, attended school there) and she adds she named the dog Oso. I ask what that means. She says “bear” in Spanish. We continue walking up Loma Parda, the school is at the end of the road, actually, there’s a crossroads a few feet feet from the school. As we approach we spot a tiny black mass, its back to us, huddled next to a pole with a sign picturing a cow on it, warning motorists there’s cows about. (Ain’t seen a cow here since we moved in 18 months ago.) And it looked just like a little bear cub. I approached it, knelt down, it turned to look at me. I spoke softly, offered my hand. He sniffed, then turned his head. I called out to him, he turned again, and I told him we wanted to take him home cause the coyotes would surely have him for a snack at nightfall. He let me pick him up and I carried him back to the house. Gave him food and water. Found a big box and lined it with towels and hid a ticking clock underneath. Jump forward to today… got a clean bill of health from the vet yesterday. Black lab with maybe something else in him. Six pounds. Got the puppy food and here we are today. He’s healthy, happy and a bit of a concern to Sophie, though Slider has no problem with him. Now, the thing is…
…it’s all a bit freaky. It’s the full moon. We bump into the hairdresser who tells us of the dog. If we hadn’t met her we probably would have turned back before we reached the crossroads because Stella was getting tired. But, of course, since we knew there was a dog there, we walked on. Oso, or to be more formal, El Oso (the bear) is almost the spitting image of a black lab who lived with us for 16 years. His name was Sark, named after a bottle of Cutty Sark scotch. He too was a mix, lab and dalmation, but he looked like and was built like a sturdy black lab with some white frost on his chest and feet. Oso has much the same frost markings. The same muzzle.
So, I’m thinking this was some kind of gift from a god, or some gods. You see, I’d just finished reading a chapter in a book, The Chaos Protocols, it’s a book on magic, and the chapter dealt with making magic at a crossroads. Well, earlier this week I’d walked to the crossroads sans Sophie and Slider. It’s maybe half mile down Loma Parda, just past the old school. And, when I stood on the bridge at the crossroads (yes, there’s even a one-lane bridge there!) I asked for blessings for myself and my family and the world. Nothing specific, just blessings. So when I received this gift of a puppy who is the spitting image of my black lab, I kinda get the chills. Everywhere I’ve taken Oso people remark how cute he is (well, most puppies are cute, yes?) and when I tell them how he was abandoned they can’t understand why. I mean, he’s in perfect health, not a runt or anything. So maybe this is a gift from the gods. Maybe he has something to teach me, to teach us. I’ll see if I can find a picture of Sark and post it.
