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About eleven years
ago this month I was exhibiting in an outdoor art festival and if you
are at all familiar with Florida, you will know how hot it can get.
Outside of my tent, the temperature had risen to almost ninety degrees
and the humidity matched in numbers. Inside the tent, away from the
glaring sun it might have been a slight bit cooler but the air was very
still and thick. On the horizon an early summer storm was brewing, heavy
black clouds hung like window curtains and I was fully expecting an
immanent downpour.
I was busy securing
my merchandise against the weather when a woman, three leashes in hand,
paraded by with the most unusual dogs I had ever seen. They were
Greyhounds and the first time I had come this close to one of them. The
dogs had lean racing bodies, muscular hindquarters, heavy chests, and
small heads and were every color but gray.
The young woman
paused in font of my exhibit and examined my work, admiringly I hoped.
Meanwhile the long tongues of the Hounds were reaching almost to the
grass.
“Are they thirsty?”
I asked.
“No, that is how
they deal with the weather. These three are just off the track and are
not used to doing a lot of leash walking.”
“Real racing dogs?”
I asked in amazement and she nodded yes. “What are you doing with three
of them?”
I was about to
learn the history of these poor suffering animals and their treatment at
the hands of their owners and trainers; how, after running their hearts
out in an effort to become champions, many of them were destroyed,
literally thousands every year. Some were “Humanely destroyed,” others
suffered more horrible and lingering deaths.
My heart opened and
I inquired how I could personally obtain one of these beautiful beasts.
“By talking to me”,
She said. It turned out that she ran an adoption agency for Greyhounds
and these were amongst the many that she had saved.
My son, Jeremy, was
living in Israel at the time and he selected her name, Jaffa. It means
“pretty’. A few months later, I acquired a second. They are like potato
chips, and you cannot have just one.
Our second,
Littlebit, did not fare as well and finally succumbed to track induced
injuries in 2003. However, while she was alive, the two of them romped,
played and enjoyed every moment of their lives.
They became, “Forty
mile an hour Couch Potatoes”
Jaffa, my first,
stayed with me until today.
Through the years,
she has given us her unrequited love and devotion, and seen Jamie and I
through the most desperate of moments in our lives. In return, she asked
for little, a drink of water, a bite of food, a place to sleep and an
occasional scratch behind her ear.
I TRUST THERE ARE
RABBITS IN HEAVEN
R.I.P. JAFFA,
1993-2007
© 2007 David
Wainland
david @ davidwainland.com |
