3 More Things That I've Learned

Turns out that the secret to avoiding knee pain for me isn’t jogging less or jogging slower, it’s running faster. Straight up running. Beagle in pursuit speed to be exact. Lucky for me, they are always in pursuit of something and as soon as I start to hate running, they stop to pee. We make a great team.  :) No, this does not mean there are 5ks in my future, and I certainly have no aspirations for half marathons or anything stupid like that. (No offense to all my lovely running friends.)  It does, however, possibly mean that I will enjoy jogging with my own dogs back home, something I never thought I would do because of my knees. This excites me!  (Again, just to be clear, it’s not the running that excites me. Don’t get confused.)

Another thing that I learned in the last 48 hours is that drinking an entire bottle of Chardonnay during two rounds of Irish Poker (after drinking several Changs on tap, and followed up with some good ol’ Scotch) WILL, in fact, result in random overloading of the emotional sensors in one’s brain. I’m going to try really hard to not learn that lesson twice.

I never watched the entire Karate Kid movie, but I caught enough of it to get the whole “wax on wax off” bit.  I found myself comparing my situation to the kid’s, wondering in bewilderment what value I am getting from raking the god damn fucking leaves every day and washing my clothing by hand.  “This isn’t what I came here for,” I thought. “I was sought out, to do big things, to take the purebred dog world of Thailand by storm. Not to rake fucking leaves!”  And even though the movie’s plot varies in several key ways (I for one, have never painted a fence), it made me smile and remember that the important lessons aren’t always the ones we plan on learning.   Sometimes the big lessons creep up on you in various forms of frustration and desperation, and then smack you in the face as you stare at the dirty water left over from your clothes.  Sometimes you think you are going off to do something incredible and instead you have to find the incredibleness for yourself, buried away in the mundane. Life is funny like that.  I'm still not entirely sure why I am here, and maybe it is only to realize just that--life usually doesn't follow that plan you have in your head, but maybe if you hang in there long enough it can become something beyond your expectations completely.

Jack, my favorite running partner

Felix the cat (Actually named Tong Luan, or Yellow Gold)

Jail time

Bobby, aka the Beagle version of Leinie

Mr. Bluff in rare form (running)

The ugly twins: Simui and his evil sister Simulan

This fat nugget is my baby Banana Leaf (By Cru-ai)

Lotus Leaf (By Bua)

Bluff doing what he loves most.

Bluff was kind enough to strike this lovely pose for me :)

The hardest dog to photograph but easiest to love, Mr. Blue

Look at me! Pet Me! LOVE ME!!