It's Ok to Laugh

Finn was hilarious! So often, he cracked himself up and certainly made me giggle every single day with his ornery and harebrained ways.  In the midst of all the kind emails and phone calls I have received since I said goodbye to my nugget, a couple people sent me "I remember" emails. As I read through them, I instantly lightened.  One email was from Karen Okura, an amazing woman and a fabulous trainer who actually inspired me to start my career:

"I will always remember Finny goosing me in the butt at Camp Dogwood. Repeatedly!! And how he laughed uproariously every time he did it! He had a wonderfully wicked and funny sense of humor. I will miss that."

I started thinking, how better to celebrate Finn than by remembering his merriment and the joy he brought to others? I began carrying a journal around with me and would jot down anything that came to mind about him; places we visited, little silly things he did throughout the day, antics from his puppy hood, his sweet ways as he aged, favorite activities that made him smile, anything that came to mind.  As the memories continue to flow, I find it gives me tremendous peace to think of all the great times I shared with my zany, lovable lug. I even started soliciting "Favorite Finn Stories" from friends and family to add to my collection. The tales make me grin from ear to ear and are helping me heal so much.

Don't get me wrong, I am still very much mourning and am sometimes mistaken for Sylvester Stallone in the Rocky movies. But, rather than wallowing in my sorrow as I often glance at empty dog beds around the house or becoming bitter because I don't have a reason to go outside and walk (Finn was the catalyst for so much self-discovery, including helping me figure out how much I LOVE the outdoors);  I choose to heal.  I want to remember him and walk forward with that silly, wagging tail in my heart and soul where it will always be.

When Finn and I first moved to Chicago, we lived with this total dodo who said he loved dogs but really just accepted Finn being in his apartment.  I was working insane hours at a job I hated and despite giving Finn about three hours of exercise a day (the minimum required for a young Chocolate Lab); I felt so guilty leaving him alone for an afternoon to go to a friend's baby shower. So, like so many others, I decided to nix the crate and leave him in my bedroom; assuming if he ruined anything at least it was mine and not said butt head roommate's belongings.

As I opened the front door of my apartment, excited to see my puppy, a feather drifted past me. Then, as I walked further into the apartment, more airy feathers circled the living room.  Weird, I thought.  The suspense was quickly resolved when I opened my bedroom door. There, in the middle of my bed, stood an exuberant Finn with a HUGE patch of feathers stuck to his belly and a roaring sea of 12-inch-deep feathers coating EVERYTHING in my tiny Lincoln Park bedroom.

He was smiling proudly, tail thump thump thumping the wall as sprang off the bed to shower me with kisses. The mystery of how he had a patch of feathers resembling cow udders unfolded as feathers floated up to my face and stuck to the slobbery spots.  I suddenly remembered the most expensive thing I owned at the time, my king-sized Ralph Lauren feather pillow and burst out laughing because I envisioned all the fun he had tearing it up. Life is too short to take ridiculous things like that seriously, so I chuckled, shook my head and cleaned up the feathers.  Well, if you have ever cleaned up feathers, you know it is a long, arduous process because they float EVERYWHERE. As I attempted to wrestle them into a garbage bag, Finn entertained himself by racing through the apartment, looking for yet something else to destroy, occasionally digging his head into the trash bag to check out his brilliant masterpiece. I knew something was up when he was out of sight for a couple minutes and it was eerily quiet.  Out of my bedroom he came, bucking like a bronco with his front two legs very purposely placed through the armholes of a certain unmentionable he pulled out of my laundry basket.  He thrashed around, leaping and prancing as the elastic helped hurdle him higher and faster through the apartment; the whole time looking at me like, "isn't this hysterical"?

As I continue to write down so many memories about Finn, mine and others'; I laugh uproariously or smile and twinkle my nose like he often did at all the shenanigans he pulled and how much fun he had.  And, somehow, even though I still cry whenever it strikes and visit him everyday in the park; remembering his good times actually made me do something in the past few days I have not done in a long time, laugh. Repeatedly. And, somewhere over the Rainbow Bridge, I know Finn's tail is thumping whatever is closest to him because he would have loved that.