Jakita and Her Daddy

I remember, I remember that morning because it was my favourite kind of day – it had snowed overnight and the landscape was a carpet of thick, wet white snow.  Momma snapped on my lead and we were off, out the door, for a walk.  With no tracks in the morning snow, the site before me was mine to discover, to carve out, like a romp down the road to visit the Wonderful Wizard of  Oz.

Yet some 6^th sense or premonition stopped me dead in my tracks.  It was like a dark shadow crossed my peripheral vision.  I stopped,  and turned back toward the house. I saw Daddy, standing in the window of the sun porch, wearing his gray-green, unzipped snow parka.  When my eyes met his, he raised his hand and waved, a big smile on his face. It felt like an eclipse,  a big black cloud momentarily  covered the sun. I bolted as if I was being chased by Seven Devils, dragging Momma across the neighbor’s lawn, over our gateway,  up the stairs, through the door where I flung my trembling body at Daddy’s ankles. If I had given Daddy a million dollars cash, he would not have been more pleased.

“Did you see that, Momma?” Daddy bragged. “Jakita never has done that before.” Momma was speechless. She had been dragged over snow banks, like a car hitched on a tow truck, and as for me, I had no clue to what had just happened or why.

In order to regain some semblance of the here and now, I did a long, deep body shake. Somehow, someway, a forewarning of what the day would bring had materialized, leaving a sense of inexplicable foreboding, warning me to not leave Daddy’s side.  But I am just a dog.  I don’t make the rules nor do I interpret feelings… I gave myself a few more total body shakes, a couple of praying dog stretches and followed him to watch the news, resting along side my beaming Daddy.

Then the phone rang, breaking the drone of the talking heads on the Sports-Net Channel.  First mistake – Momma answered it.  Second mistake, she told Daddy that one of his customers needed a quick favour. Rule #1 for Daddy was treat the Customer like King or in this case, Queen. At the end of the day, Daddy’s  Second Rule  was NEVER say no to money.

But of course this story does not end here – it never does, for Momma!