My Little Dog

Waylon, my dachshund-pinscher dog,  is a Katrina survivor, brought into Oklahoma City after the flood with other animals and people. My daughter adopted him at a shelter and when she came to live with us  for a short while, she brought him and another dog with her. My husband and I grew to love them both, so when she moved out, she left Waylon so I wouldn’t have “empty-nest syndrome” again, like I did in 2000 when she moved off to college.

My daughter realized after she was with us a while that she had lost his heart. He started sleeping on the foot of our bed one weekend when she was gone. Now don’t give me that “song-and-dance” about not letting the dog sleep in the bed with you. It’s too late for that. He already does.

When my daughter first got Waylon, she left him in a crate while she went to work, and he had terrible separation anxiety while she was gone. She and Waylon worked through the problem and he is much better. I look in his solemn eyes and wonder what he saw during the flood of New Orleans. What did this little darling dog live through?

Now he has a new assignment in life—me. He adores me. He follows me from room to room and guards me. His usual place is under my feet at the desk while I work on the computer. He likes my husband and they have fun together but he loves me. He still loves my daughter; she rescued him, but she doesn’t need him like I do.

When he sits at my feet at mealtime, he expects me to give him a taste. I deliberately don’t eat it all so I can slip him a leftover bite. Even so I buy good dog food.

In Matthew 15:26 NKJV Jesus told the woman from Canaan, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.”

She must have been a dog-lover because she said, in verse 27 “Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ tables.”

I don’t give him the t-bone steak but Waylon gets the bone.