365 Days to a Greener You

I always knew that this time would come, but I thought it would be different. I don’t quite know how–but different. I feel as though somebody has violently ripped out my soul and has torn it apart.

My first “baby” is dying and we will be taking her in to be put down on Monday. I know deep down that this is the right thing to do, but I really can’t believe it. I just need one more weekend. We stamped her paw in a small concrete stepping stone and in some cards that we will give the girls when she is gone. I will be taking her for one last walk around the block tomorrow and maybe toss the ball a couple of times. I may have to get it myself, but that’s OK.

Depending on your beliefs, life begins sometime between conception, birth or even sometimes earlier. I tend to be a glass half full type of guy, so I focus more on how you spend each day alive rather than counting down to your eventual demise. I am glad for the time that I had with my first adult pet–both good and bad.

Every day that you have on this planet is a gift.

I got Kennedy in the spring of 1994 as a puppy. I was 21 years old. She didn’t have a name for about two weeks and we had no idea what type of dog she was. We thought she was a Dingo because when we were watching a cable special on wild dogs, she looked and sounded like the Dingos on the program. It turns out she was a mix between a Border Collie and Australian Shepherd.

She was named after Jacqueline Kennedy Onasis. She died around that same time and every time we said Kennedy, she would tilt her head and wink at us. It really didn’t help that there was a MTV VJ named Kennedy at the time, but hey, it was the 90’s.

She has lived through a lot. We got her around the time of the famous OJ Simpson slow speed car chase and I find it sort of ironic that he has a good chance to go away close to her passing. The XFL came and went, she is four years older than the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and she is much older than many other pro sports teams. In real people years, she would be just starting 9th grade. She has lived in eight different apartments and houses and I have had four different cars. She was there when I got married, bought my first house and protected each of my children like they were hers.

I remember when we first got her from a friend that we had to move from our apartment because they did not allow pets. We found this little hole in the wall apartment that literally had a huge hole in the wall in the back of one of the cabinets. You never really get used to putting the dishes away and having the ability to check the weather at the same time. Oh yeah, we had the most delicious brown water on the block too.

Our next place wasn’t any better, but at least it had cleaner water. That house was so bad that to play ball with the dog, all we had to do is put the ball down on the floor near the front door. The floor was so slanted that the balls just rolled all the way to the back door in the kitchen. Eventually Kennedy learned to just do it herself.

I could fill up pages of stories of her digging in the trash, eating from the cat box, tearing up stuff and volumes of heart felt moments of a boy and his dog.

What does this have to do about green living? Everything. It is primarily based on the decisions that you have to make in your life and how things change. We are faced with so many choices in our daily life, that in order for you not to go crazy, they are interpreted in your brain as not being a choice but rather a habit.

Simple decisions like if you should recycle something, or just throw it away because your recycle bin is full; should you drive across the parking lot or walk to the next store. All of these little things add up– just like all the little things that added up in my soul that my puppy and I have done over the years. If it didn’t, then I wouldn’t feel this bad.

Godspeed Super K. I will miss you. I already do.