Still Proud

I like lying down in clear woodland streams and making little dams with rocks and twigs. I remember doing this so much when I was a kid: playing with the flow of water, whether that was stacking rocks in a little narrow river by a campsite, or whether that was stacking rocks in the gutter when someone uphill was watering their grass. These days I spend a lot less time lying on my chest closely examining the gutter and all of its cracks and debris and upcoming obstacles. I don't spend time looking at how water from someone uphill's sprinkler will go, scouting ahead for the things that might look interesting when the trickle of water in the gutter has grown on and on, to the point where the water does then finally arrive, and begins flooding a place where a piece of concrete is missing, begins lifting up a little leaf to carry along.
When I'm riding in the passenger seat with the window down, I like to stick my hand out the window and catch the wind with it and make my hand lift and dive like an airplane.
A few days ago, at time of writing, Zoo Pride Week 2025 ended.
I'm still proud of the thousands of miles that me and my late canine husband put on those trails around our apartment.
I'm still proud of that time some crazy bitch yelled at us to walk on the other side of the road because my dog was ripping up the bushes outside of her apartment (we were on the sidewalk on a public street, already about to cross the road to the other side anyways, and he was not even so much as sniffing her bushes, by the way,) and so every day without fail for the next two months, we made it a point to walk in front of that apartment building again, and we only stopped because one day rain was coming down so hard that you couldn't walk two feet outside without your clothes being soaked all the way through, and it was like, "Well baby, we're not going to have much fun going out in that."
I'm still proud of the morning belly rubs, when we would wake up with our bodyweights pressing together on the sinking middle of the bed, and he would roll against me, into me, onto his back, and he would wag as I freed an arm from the blankets to rub his chest.
I'm still proud that I broke up with a human and ended up with a dog instead, and the dog relationship was everything, and I am 100% confident that I took the right path in life.
I'm still proud that a month ago, I finally made the long road trip back to the park that we always used to walk in the most, and that is now where his ashes are, where they should be, along those paths that we took so often.
I'm still proud I've eaten lunch, dinner, and breakfast in restaurants with other zoos, and we made knot jokes and talked about the latest zoo discourse, or just shared different stories from our lives, from before we knew each other.
I'm still proud of a couple weeks ago, when I was out walking with a friend and we saw a couple of large-breed dogs and their owners across an otherwise empty courtyard, and I went out of my way to go ask if we could say hi, and I crouched way down low to be with the dogs face to face as I offered them my hands, and I ended up rubbing their sides and throats as they leaned their bodyweights into me, wagging and closing their eyes.
Today a slobbery tennis ball left my hand, soared through the air, hit the ground, bounced high, and a speeding dog snatched it out of its trajectory and carried it in her teeth back to my hand again.
Today I gave water to a dog by pouring it out of a water bottle, for her to lap at the stream, and I watched the way the water flowed over the parched dirt.
Article written by Six Six
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