{"id":3959,"date":"2018-05-17T07:49:08","date_gmt":"2018-05-17T14:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=3959"},"modified":"2020-06-21T18:58:05","modified_gmt":"2020-06-22T01:58:05","slug":"spirit-dogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/meditations\/spirit-dogs\/","title":{"rendered":"Spirit Dogs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Depression infiltrated me on Monday morning. It felt strangely novel and dangerous. Nothing was happening, with the writing, with love, with life. Everything was underwater and I had no breathing apparatus.<\/p>\n

I had to move. In a bygone era, my big dogs would have compelled me to move, get them romping on the beach, the clearcuts, or atop Cannery Hill. Their antidote never failed to heal me.<\/p>\n

But all my dogs were dead. Clyde was gone, too, and Bonnie could barely walk anymore. I had no dogs to instill movement in me.<\/p>\n

I closed a book and got up off the couch. I drove to the beach and hiked to a fort with a tin containing fort messages. While sitting on a log, I perused the messages and found nothing new. Fifty yards away, at the wrack line, a vulture tore apart a dead harbor seal. No one else was around. The ocean was flat and gray. Listless. I felt utterly listless.<\/p>\n

A text beeped. I almost never use the phone at the beach unless taking pictures of forts. I looked at the text. Two great friends and their two kooky dogs were romping down a nearby beach. They’d found a weird ceremonial candle left behind on a rootwad and sent me the image. They also sent me an image of one of the dogs bounding madly after a ball.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I got up from the log and walked to the car. I drove to the beach where my friends were, parked, and hiked through the dunes to surprise them. I did. There is nothing as uplifting as meeting friends on the beach. Or long lost reunions on the beach.<\/p>\n

We hung out together for an hour and I threw the ball to the one dog and watched the other do her funny moseying around. My friends and I discussed writing and beach combing. I laughed a lot and broke a sweat.<\/p>\n

The movement worked.<\/p>\n

One day I will have my own dog again.<\/p>\n\n

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Depression infiltrated me on Monday morning. It felt strangely novel and dangerous. Nothing was happening, with the writing, with love, with life. Everything was underwater and I had no breathing apparatus. I had to move. In a bygone era, my big dogs would have compelled me to move, get them romping on the beach, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3960,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,32],"tags":[36,746,40,749,747,48,748],"class_list":["post-3959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-oregon-beaches","tag-beaches","tag-depression","tag-dogs","tag-dogs-and-depression","tag-friend","tag-oregon-beaches","tag-walking-dogs","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3959"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3963,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3959\/revisions\/3963"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}