Tails and Truths: Plans are what you make – life is what you get

Yesterday I emailed back and forth with a fellow rescue friend who met me during the time when I attended my first Amish dog auction. Thorp, the dog I rescued, was technically supposed to go to her and to Chinese Crested Rescue. It wasn’t that they “wanted” him necessarily – it was just that they were willing to save him, if needed.

I wasn’t ever a part of that plan because I attended that auction not knowing anyone and certainly I never even thought of taking a dog home that day.

That day will be re-lived in my head for the rest of my conscious life. It changed every part of who I am and who I will be. Neither of which I ever planned on to begin with.

But yesterday, my friend emailed back, “You were meant to be at that horrific auction.”

And, I must have been.

We spend so much of our lives planning. Soul searching and seeking out opportunities we think will be right for us. We want to be “something” that we usually are not and we always desire what we don’t already have.

I believe the actual quote is something like, “Life is what happens as you are busy making plans.”

How true.

Oh how VERY true.

Going to that auction and rescuing Thorp was never in any plans I etched out. Battling WI legislation and becoming a part of a rescue group attending dog auctions wasn’t something I went to school for. And, if those weren’t enough moments to last me a lifetime – who would have thought I would keep going and train the misfit of a dog I rescued by a freak accident to be a therapy dog. I didn’t even know much about therapy dogs… let alone think to have one of my own.

However, as much as my life changed in the years that I got involved with mill dog rescue – nothing would have ever prepared me for actually doing therapy work with Thorp. No one on this Earth could have told me that I would find something that had nothing to do with animals so rewarding.

Thorp and I have developed a reading program with the kids we see at Clay. We work in small groups or one on one with the kids teaching them how to read. (Okay, Thorp just sits there).

For that 90 minutes I sit on our blanket and work with the kids who are challenged in ways no one may ever understand or be able to “fix” - I am completely present. I don’t think many of us are ever completely present in any given moment. We worry about things, we think about what we have to do next – it is truly hard to stay in the moment.

But not for me at Clay. And for an impatient person as I am – being in the moment and working with the kids is therapeutic in a way I would have never fathomed.

I never planned to work with kids – it never seemed like something that spoke to me. But as I sit and sound out words with kids who are trying so hard to fit into life the best way they know how – it feels unbelievably truthful.

I leave the school balanced and passionate about what I did. I think about those kids long after I leave and wonder what it is I could do to offer more of myself.

In many ways, I ponder my future with the kids – if I should consider further schooling and make it a profession – or would it then just become a job?

The multiple experiences that I have had in the last 4 years have taught me a few things – one of which is the most important. We can’t make an outline for everything that we do – at some point we have to take a deep breath and allow life to happen to us. Not as victims – as active participants willing to be open to experiences we never would have chosen but find ourselves in.

It is these experiences that can lead us to destinations we didn’t plan on and these experiences define who we truly are and what makes us tick.

Its difficult to open one’s soul up to the unknown and then to blindly follow where it takes you. But having been guided by fate – I can assure you that there is no greater journey than the one you never planned on.