* CUJO*

(the Chosen one)

How Cujo survived the Trial by fire, and his brother and sister did not will never really be known. But the fact is, that he did.

I watched him in his toughest moments, as an almost six month old puppy, his body wracked with sickness, panting and hanging on by the last possible threads of Life.

The picture of this little puppy in the hallway, sitting upright with his back against the wall, panting heavily, and not moving for hours, will linger in my mind for a very long long time. He was a little boy, very close to Death.

I really do hug him a lot now, a living message from his sister Meenew, and his brother Patrick.

He gets the loving I usually gave to the three puppies. Except it's just him, now.

And just like a little growing boy, he nuzzles playfully with me, and we do well with the fondness that we have for each other.

He was SO sick back then, two days before he would be six months old, and with his back against the wall, furiously fighting a battle within.

And right where you would think he would surely not live through another day, he managed to turn the tide, and started to gain lost ground.

On the day he was born, on the eighteenth of March, he was the first pup to come into this World.

At work around four thirty in the afternoon, Eric came to me and said, " Hey man, your dog just had a pup. "

I was stunned because Miss §Shelly, the mother dog, wasn't expected to have her puppies for another two days. Now she had popped a pup.

Astonished, I went over to Shelly, and sure enough, she had her first pup ever. It was a large male, almost all black, but with his father's reddish facial markings.

Later, when all the seven pups were born, I chose the pick of the litter, and named him Cujo. He was that first pup born.

They didn't come any better than Cujo. He was everything, appearance wise, that I wanted in a puppy. I knew that this dog would have his Life with me, he would go everywhere I went, sleep on my bed, and be my very best personal friend for as long as he lived.

In the following days, he would grow from a blind little whimpering pup, to the little dog that he is today at six months. Ten days after birth, he opened his eyes.

Around the same time Cujo took his first staggering steps, and developed the cutest little start of a bark.

Today he runs extremely fast alongside my bicycle right through downtown rush hour traffic, with Garry running off-leash right beside him.

So there I was, at work with Miss Shelly as she had her new pup, and I didn't bring my car.

I had walked to work that morning. Someone told me that is was good for pregnant Moms to walk.

So I had to run the ten blocks or so to get my car, and the Emergency Response Team, Jennifer and Tiffany.

By the time we arrived, driving 'code blue' all the way, Miss Shelly had popped another pup. He was almost identical to Cujo. Just the very slightest size smaller.

He is called 'Utah' and it could be argued strongly that it was indeed Utah, who was the 'Chosen One'.

From the first, I wanted to keep two pups for myself. These two were Utah and Cujo.

But there were some people who came to pick a pup for themselves when the pups were a month or so into their lives.

Both were in their late twenties, a double income family, both good looking, clean living, body builders, who owned their own home, drove a new vehicle, and were personal friends of a friend of mine.

Any dog who was picked to live in that home, had won the lottery of Life. And I would feel good about putting a good dog in such a deserving home.

Unfortunately, for me, they picked Utah. Fortunately, for Utah, he wouldn't be spending his Life with me.

I did not want to give him up, but I really could not stand in his way either. There was too much at stake, and his happiness was in the balance. When Utah was seven weeks old, he went to live that Life with his new owners.

I wished that they had taken another pup for the first couple of days, to keep him company. But he had his own personal trainer now, and the fact that he cried for the first two days is just one of those things most dogs go through in the initiation of their new Life.

It's not that my dogs don't live a great doggie's Life. Because they go everywhere I go, and I never use my car, it is always by bicycle. My dogs run alongside. Any time they are spending tied to one spot, they are usually resting, sleeping out on the front lawn. ( actually it is the front 'cattle trail'.)

They eat top of the line dog food, and get a fresh egg every single day, and I never ever cook for just myself.

At night, they share my king sized bed, taking up more than their share of the space, and if I don't give them a pillow, they will come up and sleep in my face.

But any dog gone to live in the house Utah lives in, will have a very good Life as well. He will get the best protection a vet can provide, he will splash around at the lake, and all those hiking trails, and stuff like that.

Utah has a good Life.

Now, it is Garry and huggable Cujo, and me.

Lately Garry has gotten into all that hugging also. So when I give Cujo a hug, I have to give Garry one too. So there is a lot of dog hugging going on around here.

But we all seem to like it, and it's a nice relationship to have with a dog.

If Garry and Cujo could talk, I am sure that they would join me in thanking Meenew and Patrick for passing that message on.

A message that we can share with others.

Love isn't Love, until you give it away.

You can have tons of Love in your heart, but it just isn't Love, until you give it away.

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