My Ginger is 22-months old and is the love of my life. She wants to be with me 24/7. Ginger isn’t the first Irish Setter that I have owned. In fact, my first Irish Setter was also called Ginger. However, that Ginger was in the beginning of my life after graduate school. This Ginger is in my twilight years. We are good for each other.

Six months after getting this Ginger, I went to Dr. Marchand, my cardiologist, for a routine heart checkup. All the numbers fell into the normal range including my LDL, which had been slightly more than it should have been for years. Dr. Marchand attributed it to Ginger and our bonding. We get up in the morning and walk around the lake. We have breakfast. Go to my office and either write or teach online.

Before noon, we go to a large open field at the end of the lake and play Chuckit for about twenty minutes. Then I go back to work as she gets peanut butter that I put inside one of her several hundred bones.

Prior to dinner, we play Chuckit again for awhile and then return home for dinner. We often talk with each other about life and each other. However, when I say, “Ginger, I really love you. You are the greatest. I really love you.” She understands what I am saying, and she starts an undulating dance in the midst of her excitement as she finds a toy that she brings back to me. It is her means of expressing her love for me. I call her my Dancing Queen.

However, the one song that reminds me of my Ginger Pooh is Hot Legs by Rod Stewart.

What intrigues me is that Ginger seems to understand our relationship and how much we mean to each other. Again, it is a reciprocal relationship, but I am fascinated that a canine and a human overcome the differences between us and can communicate. My relationships in the past with women surely don’t come close to approximating either Ginger’s and care for each other or our ability to communicate that love. I have failed those types of human relationships. Nonetheless, Ginger and I seem to grasp and understand each other. That haunts me. I have failed with women but not with Ginger.

Then it dawned on me, only one relationship that I have had over the years touched upon equality with a woman, that reminds me of another of my favorite songs, that relationship was like Rick and Ilsa in Casablanca.

However, that is another essay….

Thus Ginger Spoke

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"Music I Love and Why"

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"My Hauntings"

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Connecting the Dots

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08/20/18