I think that certain people are born with a knack for understanding and just truly loving an animal. I come from a family full of this kind of people, and I married a man that I sometimes think is the dog whisperer. As I watched the movie, I remembered way back to when I was my oldest child's age, and my dad brought home a dog that he had rescued. I remember secretly being a little disappointed, because we already had a dog that I adored, and I didn't want her to feel like she was being replaced. (You must know that I used to individually tuck in each one of my stuffed animals at night, and I would rotate which one I slept with every night, just so none of them felt less-loved than another...) I then got a little upset that Dad wanted to name him "Sid" and not "Shadow" or "Pepper", names that, to a 6-year-old girl, were much more fitting for a black speckled dog.
However, it didn't take long for me to become very attached to that speckled dog. It might have been his unquestionable loyalty to not only my parents, but to my brother and me as well. Maybe it was his uncanny ability to climb a tree or jump a six-foot fence just so he didn't have to poop in his own yard. It could have just been that he loved us like no animal has ever loved a human, and we knew it from the start.
So, as I watched that sweet and silly movie about the long, happy, full life of a dog and the people who loved him, deeply-rooted feelings of grief and sadness came back to the surface four years after the loss of a very important member of my family.
