Heaven in My Dog

I'm thankful for my dog. Iris, I firmly believe, was brought into my life by divine intervention. I began praying when I was thirteen years old for a puppy. I prayed, and prayed, and prayed. And God just never would answer. When I was seventeen, a friend gave me a website to look at, called horsecreekwildlife.org. This organization rescues everything from rabbits to horses and rehabilitates them. They never put an animal to sleep. They go around to animal shelters and take the creatures in need of more medical attention and work than the shelters can handle, and take of them for as long as they need to. And when I looked at the page of available pets, my eye stopped on one, a pretty little girl named Iris. I arranged to meet her, and on a Sunday afternoon on our way home from church, we stopped. I'd already worn Mom down with begging beforehand, and she was grimly resigned to at least meeting the pooch, although she wasn't thrilled with the idea of us having three dogs. When we got up to the desk, the man said that Iris had been taken on a walk, and that she would be right back. I waited very impatiently, when all of a sudden I heard something behind me. I turned, and there was this little tootsie roll walking ever so grandly towards me. The lady walking her picked her up and placed her in my arms. She wagged her tail and gave me a soft kiss on my cheek, and it was love at first lick. For those of you who know, Iris NEVER gives kisses to anybody but me. I think she looked at me and instinctively realized that here was her soul mate. And it amazes me how much that dog and I are alike-and no, I don't consider myself to be a female dog. We're both stress eaters, we both like staying in bed curled up with a good book (although I'm the one doing the reading), she gets anxious when she's not around people, and she always has to be the center of attention. I've had Iris now for...three years? And she's brought so much joy into my life. She has recently begun suffering seizures-she actually had one today. We can't figure out what's causing them, but I love the fact that even when she's in the throes of pain and can't control herself, she has never one tried to bite me. When she can feel the seizure coming, she'll station herself right by me, because she knows I'll hold her until it's over. And she's never tried to hurt me at all, which the vet says happens all the time. And you know what the grand part of the whole thing is? Iris was born right around the time that I first began praying that God would bring a dog into my life. Isn't His timing perfect? He was waiting for me to be old enough to appreciate what a gem my dog really is.