Liesbet

We aren't immortal. We don't last long. Like our dogs, we age and weaken. And die.

Ps 49:12, 20 (The Message)

She came to me as a stray more than a decade ago.

On a rainy December night she somehow managed to get through the electric fence. She was terrified, thin and in a general bad state.

When you approached her she growled and snapped in all directions. We left her alone to find her the next morning deep underneath the stack of sprinkler pipes.

She wouldn’t budge.

For two weeks I left food and water close to her place of safety. When I was at a safe distance she came out, ate and drank, sat staring at me for a while, then returned to the hide-out.

Gradually, there was movement in the tip of her tail to be seen when I brought the food and looked at her under the pipes.

And then, one morning, as I was walking with the other dogs in her vicinity, she came out and tentatively started to walk along.

She had decided to stay.

She was a mongrel in the true sense of the word. Medium sized, black with a wide head and slim body. In all probability, as is often the case, used for hunting in packs by some inhabitants of the black township a few kilometres away.

I called her Liesbet because my dad said she received the same treatment on the farm as Queen Elizabeth in Buckingham Palace.

In her I found total love embodied. I have a magnet attached to my computer stand that reads:

 “May I strive to be the person my dog thinks I am.”

I don’t think she thinks I’m anybody. I’m just me. And she loves me deeply. And I love her.

She became my shadow.

If anybody wanted to know where I was on the farm, all they had to do was to look for Liesbet’s black body.

We once calculated that she must have travelled close to 10 km on a single day as she trotted next to the tractor up and down the lines of maize as I was tilling it.

She has a crate in the workshop where she sleeps while I’m working there.

She is getting old. Grey around the eyes and mouth. Stiff in limb and movement.

Much, much slower.

She is still very keen to go for our afternoon walks with the other dogs.  But she does that at her own pace.

Until a few weeks ago, when the other dogs and I have returned from our walk I left the gate open, closed up at the workshops and waited for her. She came in 15 minutes after us.

Lately we walk shorter distances and I walk very slowly beside her as the others run ahead.

It is with much sadness that I read the words of Psalm 49.

I can see her age and weaken. I know that she will die in the not so distant future.

But Psalm 49 does not only speak about our dogs. It is not only about Liesbet. I am mentioned there as well. I shall follow the same route.

Somehow however, I have the feeling that Liesbet has decided to go first.

So that I’ll have her waiting for me once I arrive at that unfamiliar place. A man must have a dog.

George