“Dog Magic”
THE MANDALA PROJECT - How it came to life
If you know someone whose day would be brightened by this Mandala, please pass it along! Even more magical, with a love note from you!
The Mandala Project: #106
Three beloved doggos, two who left the earth several moons before this mandala came to life and one who arrived after they’d both gone, conspired to conjure a little Christmas magic this year.
The Spell of friendship
For anyone who's raised a puppy, you know that part of the joy is watching them make connections with fellow fur friends that if they’re lucky will last for many, many years.
What is less common but perhaps even more touching is when dogs find friendship with each other in the senior years of their lives.
When my beloved golden retriever Lily was 15 she began to develop a friendship with Roxy, a 12 year old dog with whom we’d never connected although she’d lived just up the street from us for years.
We began to cross her path regularly when in the last year of Lily’s life we engaged in a practice of “40 early mornings”, an undertaking of wandering slowly through the world in nature first thing every morning. Together Lily and I would head out in the neighbourhood for an hour or two, moving with curiosity and presence, never travelling more than four blocks from home.
By that time in her life Roxy had developed a lot of joint pain and stiffness and did not travel fast or far so her owners rarely tied her up, and we would often encounter her making her way up and down the sidewalk in front of her house exploring the world she could get herself to, or laying amongst the trees a few yards away. She loved to be outside.
Over time it came to be that we couldn't pass by Roxy's place without Lily steering us straight there, for a greeting if Roxy was outside and a little sniff-a-roo if she wasn't.
Their relationship was unusual in that it wasn’t characterized by the amped energy dogs often exhibit when they greet each other. They would simply amble into each other’s space, sometimes seeming to barely acknowledge each other, and share a little time together.
In the last 2 to 3 months of Lily's life, in the spring of her 16th year, she was no longer content to simply stop by for few moments, she wanted to hang out on Roxy’s front steps or the little patch of grass in front her house or among her favourite trees. Didn’t matter whether or not Roxy was inside or outside or home at all, this became a part of our daily walks.
Sometimes in her final days, Lily would lead me there at 9 or 10 o'clock at night and the two of us would sit in her yard for a good half hour or more. This happened right up until and including the night before Lily died.
While these two dogs did not have a friendship born of playtime and lengthy outings together, somehow a bond had formed between them. I believe they connected around a shared experience of being on the threshold of leaving this world.
One night, three or four days before Lily died, we’d been doing our ritual hang out in Roxy's yard even though she wasn’t outside. When I tried to make a move toward home, Lily dug in and wouldn’t budge. This was new, so I trusted she had an important reason for not wanting to go.
While I didn’t really have a relationship with Roxy’s people, I felt an imperative to knock on their door and ask if she could come outside.
I'd had a few exchanges with the older couple she lived with: the woman was very pleasant but her husband was rather gruff and curmudgeonly. For this reason in part, it felt somewhat inappropriate to knock on their door at 9:30 at night, but as I paused with fingers curled and hesitantly looked down at Lily, her clear eyes insisted. “Do it.”
I knocked lightly, a couple of times, half hoping they wouldn’t answer and then thought, “Oh shit…” when I saw it was the husband making his way up from the living room. He opened the door and mumbled, “Ya?” I asked, “Is Roxy here?” He tossed back a dismissive and curt, “She's in bed.”
I looked down at Lily. Unwavering, steadfast gaze. I said, “I think my dog wants to say goodbye to her.” Just then his wife appeared in the background, “What’s up?” He said “I dunno, it's that blonde lady, somethin’ or other about her dog wanting to say bye to Roxy.”
The woman (who knew Lily was dying) said, “Oh, she’s in bed, but I’ll see if I can get her to come downstairs.”
As soon as she heard the call Roxy appeared at the top of the stairs and in her signature endearing fashion began see-sawing down them. Stiff front legs that no longer bent hit each step in tandem, followed by a back-end catching up just enough to keep the trajectory going, any lack of finesse overshadowed by her whole-hearted enthusiasm.
She came out to touch noses with Lily and they lay in the yard together for a while as the last of day faded into twilight.
Such was the love affair these two dogs had with each other. Lily died a few days later, in June of 2022, and Roxy and I got to grieve her loss for a time together before she followed that autumn.
Magic is Love Made Visible
Dr. Lisa Miller, Founder and Director of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute and author of “The Awakened Brain” has done extensive research on the science of spirituality as a powerful force in healing. She defines one aspect of spirituality as transcendent awareness: our innate capacity to know that we are loved, held, guided and never alone, and shares how current science reveals that this capacity is hardwired in us.
In my experience this rings true. I’ve come to know beyond any doubt that we are energetically bound by the force of love that holds the whole cosmos together, connecting all of life in the most mysterious and serendipitous ways.
Magic is what we experience when we open to perceive this force in action and are gifted with tangible evidence of it.
Here’s where the Christmas magic comes in, and no surprise that my new young pup Gryffindor led us straight to it.
I’d been wondering for a few days what mandala from the collection I might use for my Christmas card this year. On December 24th Gryff and I were out for our morning walk when he decided to take a route we rarely travel which led us up through the back of Roxy’s yard.
Weaving through her stand of favourite trees we walked right into this lovely heart. That it was in her beloved spot and so close to where she and Lily communed in their end days was enough to confirm that magic was afoot, but the sparkling morning light filtering onto the scene sealed the deal.
There are countless occurrences of magic surrounding Lily’s dying, death and continued presence as a wise elder and guide in my life and they include a lot of spirits revealing themselves through the natural world.
One of those spirits took the form of a heart-shaped rock I discovered in Roxy’s yard during those final visits, so the connection with these treasured dogs and hearts was already well-established when we came across this beautiful one on the wild edge of Roxy’s yard.
Our original find ultimately made its way to a home-base in my yard to collaborate with several others that were gathered to support Lily’s transition, and it’s lived perched 5 feet up in a tree there ever since.
It’s a joy to have this symbol of Roxy’s presence in one of my most beloved spaces, and I often offer a loving greeting to her when it catches my attention.
This is how I’ve come to experience magic works. I put out the call that I was seeking a mandala, love delivered, and the girls guided us in. Not only to share the gift of this Christmas mandala, but also to nudge me that it was time for the story of their friendship to make its way into the world.
Finding this gorgeous offering on Christmas-eve morning was about as charming as charm gets. Lily and Roxy were alive and present in the space and conspiring to make love visible.
When the Door’s Open…
In this first year with me, Gryffindor has formed a habit of bringing little pieces of mulch with him every time he comes in from the yard. He arrives at the door to be let in and as I’m about to unclip him he spins back into the yard to grab a tiny stick or two.
Concrete evidence of who’s trained who: He gets to bring it in and once inside I ask him to drop it in exchange for a treat so I can toss it back out into the yard.
This everyday occurrence is how some extra magic wove its way in to the tail-end of this story.
After several days of writing, I’d finished up the Lily and Roxy part of this story. They’d been helping with the telling (One clue: I didn’t even remember taking the above video of the two of them, but it emerged out of thousands of photos when I was looking for something completely unrelated) so I was feeling them very much with me. Later that same evening, Gryff was spending some solo time out in the yard. When he arrived at the door to be let in, I reached to unclip him and he did his customary dash back out into the darkness to grab a treasure to bring along.
Once inside he deposited his find onto the kitchen floor at my feet, but tonight it wasn’t a stick. It was small and gray and round. I reached to pick it up and as my hand connected with it I experienced an increasingly familiar sensation of physical time and boundaries falling away, dropping me into a deep sense of trust in the interconnectedness that we’re dancing in all the time.
What Gryff had found and selected as the thing to bring in to the house, on this particular night of feeling my beloved canine friends close, was the one and the same heart that had been safely tucked up on a branch in a tree for the last year and a half.
He’d brought in Roxy’s rock.
When the door is open, there’s just no stopping magic from inviting itself on in.
Want to collaborate to create some magic in your life?
“Flow” - The Mandala Project: #55
Flow is what you feel when you’re holding a stable, steady centre while the currents of the universe are swirling around you with infinite possibilities of disruption.