Adventures at Rasa Ranch #24

[Guest guest]

7/26/02 "Reaching Out"

 

Today I gave Bodhi a haircut. All of his outer fur with the mats,

burs, and foxtails was removed, leaving only his soft, fluffy

undercoat. Ananda simply could not keep her hands off of him! When

it got to be just short of torture for the poor guy and it was no

longer peaceful to be in the same room with them, her dad and I

stopped quietly reminding her to be gentle and flat-out told her that

she was not allowed to touch Bo again for the rest of the evening.

 

This caused a fair amount of (literal) growling on her part, as well

as "humphing" and general unpleasantness. Since she had refused our

sincere offers of attention, Jim and I decided to take a little

stroll together outside. We told her where we were headed and we

left. She half-cried in the doorway as we walked away from the house

and after seeing me reach my hand out for her to join us, she decided

to close herself inside instead.

 

A little while after we had disappeared around the bend in the long

drive we heard her holler for us like she meant it. It sounded as if

she had been following us at some distance. We nodded at each other

and promptly, yet without any hurry, turned around and made our way

back, but as soon as we got close she ran away. When we showed no

reaction to this and simply continued on toward the house she finally

started to cry for real. She asked me to come over to where she was.

 

 

Jim and I exchanged a little kiss, we released hands, and I went.

Again, when I got close to where she was standing she started to run

so I said to her sternly, "Look. If you take one more step away from

me I will turn around and walk back without you." She stopped. I

stretched out my hand for her to come and take hold but she refused

it. Instead she declared, "I want you to come over here."

 

For a moment I felt a rather stubborn resistance inside myself to

move. Then the resistance dropped and I found myself taking two

giant steps forward. I said, "Here are two big steps. Now it's your

turn!" It was really neat because I could sense that her resistance

had given way at the same time that mine did. She relaxed and almost

smiled, taking two big steps toward me too, but we still could not

quite reach each other. With our arms fully extended we decided one

more step each would do it and when we were linked up we peacefully

headed back toward the house.

 

The kid was just tired, that's all. She requested to go to bed as

soon as we got back home.