This morning Red and I returned to the now famous Outrun Crime Scene in the town cemetery. Over the weekend a member of the Border Collie Police Patrol – a Lone Ranger, I suspect – accused me of cruelty and deceit and breach of trust for sending Red off on outruns where there were no sheep on a beautiful pasture on a hill. The investigating officer got confused and thought this was also happening on our walks in the cemetery and I was upbraided for that as well, although there are sheep outside of the cemetery. Red rounded them up when they busted loose a couple of weeks ago.

I did sent Red out on an outrun with no sheep on the top of a gorgeous hayfield, we will be doing that again tomorrow, or whenever the weather clears, I am fixated on getting a photograph of Red on his joyous run, up to the top of the hill and around, he loves his outruns more than anything. It is a beautiful thing to see.

I learned much from the exchange, mostly that compassion and understanding are easy to embrace, difficult to practice. Dr. Karen Thompson helped me to see that.  I learned that my new heart is sensitive and needs awareness and understanding. I learned too, that I have the most wonderful and trusting relationship with Red, and I am so grateful for it. I am not angry now at the person who sent those messages, I do feel sorry that there are such people in the world, and they seem to have the need to be hurtful to people. The lesson for me is to never to do it and to learn how not to feel it.

I have to be honest, although my accuser insisted the entire world of border collie owners were up in arms against me, I never heard from anyone else on the force – hundreds of people wrote from all over to say nice things to me – and so I also learned to consider my tell-tale heart and look away at smallness and rage. It never makes sense to respond to anger with anger, I have learned this time and time again, I wonder if it will ever be so internalized that it will truly become a part of me.

I so respect the private and individual nature of our relationship with animals, it is, or used to be, a private thing, a sacred thing. I think the Internet has spawned the idea that there are no private things, that we all have the right to wantonly enter the space of one another and tell each other how to live. I never tell anyone else how to get a dog or how to live with them, I can only offer my own perspective. Every person and dog are so different.

Of course, no one can really know from the outside what the true relationship is between a person and a dog. Red and I were already quite close, the open heart surgery gave me yet another lesson, one which teaches us about the power of an animal like a dog to comfort, heal and sustain us.

How can I really say whether Red trust me? But I can surely say how much I trust him and love him. Since I came home from the hospital, he has never left my side (except to do his outruns with or without sheep), he has used his therapy skills on me. He sniffs my heart quite often and looks at me intently, as if running his own check. I love our cemetery walks together, and once we discovered there were sheep there, we both love them all the more.

Red spots them, goes into his crouch – I do sent  him out on amazing outruns through the tombstones – and then I call him off and he happily resumes our walk up the hill. I noticed this morning that this makes me smile, and there have been some days this month when that was an especially precious thing. We can only stand in our truth and follow our own lights, that is, in some ways, the most precious gifts we are given. I am reminded to never surrender that to any other human being.