A Week With Abigail

This past week I kept a dog for some friends. The dog’s name is Abby (it might be Abbey... I’m not sure). She’s less than a year old and, while being a good dog, she can become uncontrollably excited rather quickly. Here are some funny things from my week with Abby...

- She seems to be a bit afraid of the dark. So, if it was dark she wouldn’t leave my side. On Monday I went on a quick trip up to Richmond. When I got back to Littleton it was very cold and I was eager to get in bed. However, Abby had waited patiently in my kitchen for my return. I felt like she ought to play for a bit, so, around midnight, I took her ought to play. I tried to get her to just run around some, but she seemed skittish because of the dark and the leaves rustling in the wind. So, had you come by camp around midnight you would have found me running up and down the field with a flashlight and a dog close by.


- No matter how much I walked her around in the woods, Abby refused to use the bathroom until she got into the middle of the camp field. It is like she would hold it until I let her out of the woods.


- Wednesday night two friends came to camp at the end of the work day. They went down to the dock to watch the sunset while I made a quick run to the hardware store with Abby. Upon our return, Abby, along with Scott (who came with us from the store) headed down to the dock to join the girls. Abby started to use the bathroom in the middle of the field and I chased her to the woods. She just stood there and seemed to wonder why I had disrupted her. She seemed unwilling to go at that point so we headed down to the dock. We got about 15 feet out when she decided that she didn’t really like walking on the dock. She stopped. I continued. She whimpered. I continued. I joined Mallory, Catherine, and Scott at the end of the dock while keeping an eye on Abby. She left the dock and started playing in the rip-rap (rocks around the bulkhead/shoreline). Eventually she fell in the water. In spite of the fact that the water was cold she played in it for a bit. Seeing that she was fine, I sat down and turned my attention to the others. In the meantime, Abby got out of the water and finally attended to her previously unfinished business and relieved herself in the sand at the end of the dock. Then, somehow, she made her way down the dock without any of us realizing it. We knew she was there when she came running into our backs with her cold, wet, stinky, sandy body. I felt bad for the girls as they were wearing nice clothes. At some point, in her excitement to be at the end of the dock, Abby threw up. Ohh Abby.


- Thursday night: There was a report that someone in the community was missing (that person was later found). When I heard the news it caused a certain level of paranoia. While I had no reason to believe that anyone would go to camp, I was annoyed with myself for leaving the baggage car (my home) unlocked. I was doing some painting at someone else’s house when I got a call that an alarm was going off at camp. The person who called also indicated that his dog had been acting a little strange that night. This certainly increased the paranoia and I decided I better head over to check things out. I loaded Abby in the truck and we went over to camp. The time was about 10pm and it was dark. I parked in the parking lot next to the flagpoles and saw that the alarm was the car alarm on the camp car (it’s a Tracer – awesome). I grabbed a flashlight out of the truck and my camp keys. I made Abby get out and join me in the cold dark. I delayed investigating what was going on with the camp car to go check out the baggage car and upgrade my flashlight to a bigger one that I had in my bedroom. After checking all my rooms and locking up the baggage car I went over to the office to get the keys to the camp car. I walked over to where it was. I was very much on edge. I told Abby to keep watch as she reluctantly approached the Tracer with me. I couldn’t get the car alarm off no matter what button I pressed or even when I cranked the car. So, I decided to disconnect the battery. As I got a wrench out of the truck Abby barked at something and then ran under the truck. It scared me for sure, but I didn’t see anything. After coaxing her out from under the truck we headed back over to the Tracer. She growled at something again and then cowered away from the Suburban that was parked next to the Tracer (all this time the car horn is still blaring). I then became afraid that someone was in the Suburban. After making myself open the back door, I saw that it was empty. I popped the hood on the Tracer and got to work on the battery. It was really cold (in the lower teen’s) and I could hardly get the cable off the battery terminal. I was concerned that in the cold my hand would slip and connect the two terminals with my wrench (which would have been bad for me). I also told Abby to watch my back as I had my head under the hood and was afraid with every sound that I heard over the car horn was someone getting ready to kill me. Instead of keeping a lookout, Abby got excited and decided that she wanted to either jump on me or up on the engine. So, at that point I was trying to disconnect the battery in the bitter cold with a car horn blaring and a fear that I was in the last minutes of my life as a frightened dog made repeated attempts to jump under the hood of the car. Alas, I got the battery disconnected. The sudden silence startled Abby... which startled me... which made me drop the cable back onto the battery terminal... which reactivated the horn... which startled me... which startled Abby. I removed it once again, closed the hood, and ran to the safety of my truck with the dog leading the way.


It is my stated purpose on this blog, to try to point others to Scripture. I can’t say for certain what the truth is to be learned from what I have written in this post. It could be that life is exciting and contains in it good blessings of laughter and pleasure from the Lord. It could be the reminder that man is part of the created order. His relationships with creation has become distorted and in this fallen world in the age between the cross and the new creation our relationships with the created order are marked by both good and disorder. I guess there are any number of lessons. Whatever the spiritual truth to be gleaned, I had a good week with Abby.