I have a love/hate relationship with this time of year. I know, after all the snow, sleet, freezing rain and cold temps we’ve had lo’ these long winter months, I should embrace the occasional fifty degree day and I do, to an extent. My dog, Deion and I are enjoying the longer walks, I love the smell of spring in the air, my heart leaps at the first sign of daffodil greens poking out from the brown, winter worn earth.
Oh, the earth. This is where me and spring part ways. The earth in my yard, for the most part, is a muddy mess. Dog toys not seen since last November, suddenly crawl out of their winter hibernation beneath the snow and lie amongst the dead branches and water-soaked dog “treasures”. It’s not a pretty picture.
My dogs, God bless them, look at springs arrival a little differently.
Baci, my boxer mix, runs out the doors with wild abandon like the proverbial kid in a candy store. She darts from one muddy, disgusting toy to the next as if greeting old friends. She happily tosses the dried branches into the air and drags them about the yard. Deion wears a track next to the woodpile sniffing out the newly emerged critters. Non of this I would mind very much, in fact, I would delight in it if it wasn’t for the mud that I see flying around as they do it. The mud that, in a very short period of time, I will be desperately trying to get off of them before they get into the house. The mud that, however hard I might scrub, I know I will be mopping from the floor....again.
But yesterday, as I was straining once more with a towel in one hand and a mud soaked paw in the other, I thought about the extreme patience they had with me as I grabbed clumsily at each paw. It’s a fact that dogs do not like their paws touched. To a dog, grabbing their paw is quite rude actually. Just try grabbing a strange dogs leg....wait, no, if you value your fingers, don’t do it. Take my word for it. They don’t like it. So, for my two dogs to let me hold their paw long enough for me to get into every nook and cranny with a towel, takes extreme amounts of love and trust. I can tell they aren’t having fun and the feeling is mutual but its an agreement we come to with our dogs. You can live in my nice warm house, have plenty of good food and fresh water, toys, warm hugs, daily walks, but you need to be mud-free.
Then, I began to think about the humility of this whole experience and I began to consider the humble act of Jesus as he bent down to wash the feet of his disciples. How God’s son humbled himself and became a servant, saying to his disciples, “You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” (John 13: 13,14) Now granted, me washing my dog’s paws is not to teach them about humility and servitude; it’s about the preservation of my carpeting, but it is a humbling experience. We humans are often stronger, we can think logically and create cities of steel, we are masters of our domain yet we pick up our dogs doo, wash their feet, bathe them because, yes, we are clean by nature but also, we love them and so we care for them as Jesus did his disciples. Dogs humble us. I can’t help but think as they fly around the yard, enjoying these first warm days of spring, that maybe they have the right idea. Maybe I should be out there, running through the brown grass and kicking up mud. But then, who would wash my feet?
