Inspiration Comes From…Peanut Butter?

Every day, I wake up and get ready for work, half awake.  My knees hurt.  My muscles ache.  Another day at the office.  Really, there isn’t always a lot of that to put a smile on your face, right?  But every day, I walk out of the house with a big grin on my face.  I started to wonder how I managed to graduate from crabby woman to happy woman after I climb the stairs and before I get in the car.  So I started paying attention to what put that smile on my face.  And I found it.

Peanut Butter.

See, we have two rescue dogs. One (Lucy) is mine, and one is my mom’s.  Mom’s dog was bred in a puppy mill for years.  When we adopted her, she was terrified of everything, she had a curved spine from not standing and stretching, she’s nearly deaf, and she’s nearly blind.  She bonded instantly with my mom, and settled into her role in the family.  And mom loves this little pug.  Everyone does.  This dog came with the name Gladys.  She wasn’t a Gladys, so mom named her Baby.

Baby was, quite frankly, a little bit of a mess.  She was scared of everything.  She doesn’t see well, so steps are particularly scary, especially since she’s never used them.   But, Baby started to trust us, and soon, she walked down her first step, leaving the house and going outside.  Then she went down the second step.  And we had ourselves a happy dog, who turned around and grinned with pride.  And we realized her name really wasn’t Baby.  She was just a little Peanut.  So, we renamed her Peanut Butter.

So what about Peanut makes me smile every morning?  It’s her attitude.  Every morning, I go into my mom’s room to lift Peanut down off the bed, since she still won’t use stairs, and she has to get down somehow.  I go into the bedroom and she is usually sound asleep.  I pet her to wake her up, and her tail starts moving, and her face erupts in a huge grin.  And then she stands up and gives a huge stretch, and looks up at me and waits…

She waits for what makes me grin every day.  She waits for her leap of faith.

This little dog, who was abused for 8 years until she found our home, has decided to put her faith in her human servant.  The minute my hands go under her belly, Peanut – the dog terrified to go down two steps – leaps.  Knowing I am there, she trust me to carry her safely to the floor, where she does her “nut dance of happiness”, and runs to the door of the bedroom – because she’s excited to see if she’s lucky enough to get ANOTHER bowl of kibble (which of course she is…) and she greets her day with happiness, gratitude and love.  And she does it so well, that she forces me to as well.

So my inspiration for gratitude comes from a little dog who reminds me that I don’t really know what suffering is, and reminds me that I might not know everything about gratitude either.

What makes you grateful?  Share with me below!