Like Otis
We rescued Otis over a month ago. He is a two-year-old French Bulldog with English Bully highlights. He has breathing issues due to bad breeding and a lack of respect for a living being. In short, he is a failed lab experiment and shouldn’t exist.
But he is here. He didn’t choose to be here, and he didn’t choose to have health issues that make him gasp for life when he plays, eats, or sleeps. Humans don’t ask to be born either. We are born without consent and our imperfections and pain will follow us our whole life. I often remind Otis that he is loved and that he has a place in this world. I like to believe that he understands me.
Just like Otis, who probably gets tired of the struggle, we human beings can feel like it is hard to breathe — there isn’t a point to any of this. He often wakes up in terror clinging to life fighting to breathe. I think that we all do this in some fashion. We wake up and it is hard to breathe with all the crap happening around us.
But this terrible situation is a picture of hope because he now finds rest…usually when next to me. I think it is because he is safe. He used to flinch and cower from me and now he followed me around and wants to be near me. I think that the love he feels is what gives him purpose and a place to belong.
I think Otis can teach us some things about life. There will be times when we will struggle… when we are fighting for air, especially when we are in the midst of the rising smoke from a world on fire. That is when we need help.
We can’t live life alone. We need others to help us breathe again. It is the only way to find rest. We need someone who already has their oxygen mask on, like they tell you on airplanes. Put yours on first before you help others. Like Otis, we need to rest like he is in the picture.
Rest comes from deep steady breaths. It isn’t a weakness to need oxygen. Oxygen is life. But when we need help … When we can’t breathe or can’t remember how to breathe again, we all need people to remind us how. During the night Otis will wake up gasping and sometimes it scares him, and he howls. My wife or I will pet him and reassure him and then he falls back asleep breathing a little easier. It isn’t his physical body that helps him rest, it is the reassurance of his loving humans that makes it possible for him to breathe again.
This summer he will have surgery that will clear his airway and allow him to breathe freely for the first time in his 2 years of living. He came from a neglected existence, it was abusive…Otis’s world was in flames and the smoke was choking him out. But then came a Craigslist ad, a phone call, and a rescue that changed his life. You see Otis didn’t have the power to change his circumstances. It was strangers from seventy-five miles away who had no idea when they woke up that morning would have an Otis in their lives. That is how the Universe works, I guess. I know that in this picture Otis rests because he has help learning to breathe daily.
To wrap this up… be like Otis. Don’t be afraid of the help that you need. And if you are someone who already has their oxygen mask on… go help others to breathe in the smoke and bring them home so they can finally rest. I mean if we all did this, we might just douse the flames of this world with love. Love is the answer…it always will be
Thanks for reading.
~RT
