“Dogs are great. Bad dogs, if you can really call them that, are perhaps the greatest of them all.”—John Grogan
Any of you who follow me here on my blog or my Facebook page, know Frankie. I wouldn’t call him a “bad” dog. Instead I like to say he’s a good dog some of the time and as the years go by, it’s actually more of the time.
Frankie was a challenge when I brought him home from the Humane Shelter. When I visited him and he stole my heart, he was a very good dog and put his head on my chest and looked at me with those big brown eyes. I felt like his person from that moment on the day before Thanksgiving when my granddaughter had convinced me to go dog shopping. I’d been without a dog for a little over a month after my very very good dog, Oscar, passed away from bone cancer. My granddaughter thought five or six weeks was too long to go without a dog.
So we went to Frankfort to see a dog she’d seen online that was available for adoption. That wasn’t Frankie. We did visit that dog. He was nice but didn’t seem all that interested in me. Then I spotted handsome Frankie in one of the cages. He had just become available for adoption that day and so far they hadn’t put his picture out on the internet. He’d been picked up as a stray and no one had come to claim him.
He was skinny, about 55 pounds, and they said he was probably two years old. That was exactly the size and age I wanted. A dog not too big and one past puppy age. They were wrong! But by the time I figured that out, Frankie was already my dog and I learned to deal with a dog in his teen years. We all know teen years in anything can be challenging.
Our time started out a little wild when I went to pick him up by myself on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Frankie is not a car dog. I shoved him in the car. He jumped out. I shoved him in the back of my van again and got the door closed. Thinking I had it made, I got in the car. Seats were no obstacle to Frankie. In a moment, he was in the front seat, panting frantically. I drove home with one hand on the steering wheel and the other holding Frankie away from me in the passenger seat. I named him on the way home. It seemed to fit him. And then the adventures started.
We live on a farm. Most dogs we’ve had know where they belong and where they don’t belong. Frankie thought he belonged everywhere. I kept him in the house and had to keep him on leash when we went outside because he’d make a run for the neighbors or who knew where instead of walking with me. He always came back in his own time, but I didn’t want him to do who knew what at the neighbors or to go off and get picked up by the dogcatcher again. So, we built a fence. That fence saved my sanity and made Frankie a happier dog.
He grew another 40 plus pounds and gave me plenty of exercise hanging onto him when I had him on leash. I was able to turn him loose on the back of our farm with no other houses to entice him away. But he had a way of getting into trouble. He might jump into the pond and come out stinky and muddy. He might chase a cow. He might try to catch a bird out of the air. He might eat things better not mentioned. He might come back to me on our walks covered in cockleburs or various other sticktights.
Sometimes when I take off his leash in the field and think he will walk with me, he’ll give me a look over his shoulder as he races toward the neighbors’ houses. And once he found a skunk. He hated that as much as I did. Especially getting a bath in the yard when the temperature was 19 degrees.
We went out very early a few days ago in a heavy morning fog. I was nervous the whole time because that could be perfect skunk weather. Thank goodness, so far he hasn’t had that second encounter.
You may be wondering by now what any of this has to do with a 1st Sunday Devotional. But think about us in the Lord’s eyes. We forget to listen to the rules or remember the proper boundaries for our lives. We go out and get in all sorts of messes. We end up weighted down with troubles we’ve accumulated by getting into places we shouldn’t be or doing things without the proper thought or prayers.
The same as Frankie we’re good some of the time and at our best, we’re good most of the time. But whenever we do get ourselves in trouble or forget to do the things we should, then we come running back to the Lord to ask forgiveness and promise to try to be better.
I’m not sure Frankie ever worries about forgiveness or promising to be better. At least he’s not at that point yet, but he does keep running back to me – eventually. And he is a good dog most of the time. May we be the same or we can hope even better and do our best to follow the paths the Lord has for us.
He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. (Psalm 103:10-12 ESV)
As always, thanks for reading.
Comments 14
I love this , Ann! Frankie is a lucky boy, and I’ll bet he knows it! I love the way you worked it into a devotional…..such a great analogy.
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Glad you enjoyed the post, Lynda. Thank you for reading it. I’m not sure Frankie knows it, but he is definitely a lucky boy. Darrell says I’ve spoiled him. I do get my exercise letting him in and out sometimes.
Thank you for sharing. Frankie keeps you on your toes. Blessings
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He has definitely given me a few workouts hanging on to him when he wants to chase something I don’t want him to chase, Lucy. But like I said, he’s a good dog some of the time.
Enjoyed reading your devotional. Frankie sounds like a handful, makes him very interesting!
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He’s better than he used to be, Connie. Sometimes even stops when I tell him to. Sometimes. He is afraid of thunder and gunshots. So, I know we are in for a couple of rough weeks around here with deer hunting season coming up. Even gun shots a long way away make him very nervous.
I love this…. Good message!
Frankie sounds a lot like my Ollie. My grandkids rescued him off the side of the road after someone dumped him out. Ollie also seemed to think the whole world is his yard. But I live in a very small, tight-knit community on a lake at the end of a private lane. I had a fence, but my neighbors encouraged me to take it down so Ollie could visit them when I’m not home. Now he’s the neighborhood dog by day, and sleeps and eats at home. When he had a visit to the vet last year, the neighbors even chipped in on the bill! They take him on boat rides and he even has a bed and toys at a couple of their homes. He’s living the good life. Thankfully he’s stayed away from skunks so far and learned not to tangle with groundhogs. He still rolls in duck poo every spring, though and comes back home with his tail tucked and sad eyes, knowing a bath is mandatory. Like us, when he finds himself in trouble, he knows he’s loved anyway.
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I love hearing about Ollie, Lavon. What a lucky dog to be everybody’s dog. At least in a way. How neat that your neighbors wanted you to unfence him. I don’t think my neighbors would be that happy with Frankie visiting them. Frankie has a lot of energy and has a hard time containing himself and not jumping on someone if they don’t start noticing him soon enough. He has learned he’s supposed to, but supposed to doesn’t always mean much to Frankie.
And what neighbors to help with a vet bill! I think you must live in the best neighborhood ever. And I’m sure Ollie would agree. Thanks for sharing about your very special neighborhood dog.
I have to admit that I’ve enjoyed getting to know some neighbor dogs. I’ve had several that watched for me when I would go out to walk and here they would come to join in the trek. I wrote a blog about one of them, a Saint Bernard named Roxie. I loved that girl so much that I didn’t even mind when she slimed my jeans. I had a washing machine. 🙂
Here’s the link if you’d like to meet Roxie. She was a beauty. https://www.annhgabhart.com/2014/11/10/remembering-roxie-my-walking-buddy/
Ann,
Thank you for this nice story. It’s a good way to start Monday morning.
Kim Savage
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Glad you thought so, Kim. Hope you have a great week.
This is so beautiful. Thank you for the analogy and for bringing our thoughts around to our relationship with our Lord.
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Thank you, Janettem for your kind words. It is good to center our thoughts around how we can be better followers of Christ.
Love the Frankie story, Ann. (I could tell a few similar stories about our 1 year old Aussie-Border Collie mix.) Yes, the Lord is so good to us despite our waywardness and stubbornness. Thanks for the message and the example of how our dogs teach us so many things 🙂
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Glad you liked reading about Frankie, Amy. I don’t know what breed Frankie is but I think he’s part labrador and part Aussie. So, I guess it’s no wonder you see similar stories about our dogs. Frankie does have the lab personality about loving everyone he meets, dogs and humans. Now, cats and rabbits, not so much.