The day my husband introduced me to Ferdinand, I knew I was in love. With Ferdinand. Just like he had loved Ferdinand as a kid while sitting on the floor of his grandparent's cabin on the lake. And just like kids reading the book through the past 75+ years in 75 other languages have loved him. There is something unbelievably beautiful about a bull who defies expectation and contentedly smells the flowers. 'And for all I know he is sitting there still, under his favorite cork tree, smelling the flowers just quietly. He is very happy.' I hope he is.
Recently, I realized something about the two males that live in my house: they are both a lot like Ferdinand. I absolutely love that my husband has decided that it is better to happily enjoy nature than use his strength to go butt heads with other bulls, or show off in front of people, or bend to other people's expectations of who he should be and what he should do. And I think we should have named our dog 'Ferdinand', too. But instead we named him Peluche.
Peluche is the perfect dog for us. He really is. And Peluche is so much like Ferdinand it really is remarkable. Peluche loves to stop and smell the flowers whenever possible. The other day he moseyed his way through a flowering bush emerging with pollen all over his snout. Another time we had to scold him for laying on top of our grandma's flowers! Yep, Ferdinand's spirit lives on in our pooch. Peluche loves to go on long hikes in quiet forests and mountains 'til his legs buckle beneath him and he can roll in soft grass to nap underneath a tree. He'd prefer it if we just let him off leash so he could mostly loop around us alone...he'll find us again, he promises. He won't be lonely. We used to let him, but here where cougars and bears reign, it seems unwise to have him looping back with a bear on his heels.
When he gets an idea in his head, he'll just go bowling through anything in his way not thinking about what's happening behind him. Beware knocking heads with Peluche; he will win.
Recently we went on a longer hike with big boulders at the top. Peluche climbed up right behind us but then suddenly was just unable to get his four tired paws to jump among the rocks. Yep, he was stuck.
What to do?
At first he just enjoyed the view. Laying down in among the rocks, then propping himself up to see what could be seen, then leaning into us with his head for a few scratches behind the ear...and a few more. He didn't whine. He didn't cry. And he didn't move.
But then, as I was scrambling up to get to the very top, I looked back to see this rather sweet scene: my two Ferdinands clambering down the rocks together, one clearly putting in more effort than the other...but the other exhibiting a trust that he never would have two years ago when we adopted him.
And sitting there, on a new favorite mountain, enjoying the wind in my face just quietly, I was very happy.
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