Celebrating a Relationship

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                                                         By Brother Gregory

 

I’m going to talk with you about a special relationship that several New Skete monastics have and have had: a relationship with their German Shepherd dogs. Over the years I have been blessed with relationships with many dogs under my care at New Skete: Diamond, Raja, Lena, Ombra, Yaki, and maybe more, and while in Maine I had Yugi and Esra.

 

     In 2018, yet another German Shepherd, born in Germany, came into my care and is still with me now. Her name is Quilla and she is now six years old. In 2018 Quilla gave birth to her first litter of puppies, and she was and has been a true mother, licking and cleaning all her puppies. Quilla has had four litters so far at New Skete, and maybe another litter is coming in around July. She is staying now in the puppy kennel while in heat, and I miss her. I visit her daily, but that is not enough. When not in heat or raising her puppies, Quilla is in my bedroom at night and by my side all the time during the day. I miss our usual routines: going for a ride into town to get the mail, hanging around in the back of the monastery and watching her play with Habibah, her canine buddy, or just being herself around guests and tourists and never ashamed to get down on her back and ask for a belly rub. At night in my room, sometimes she will come over to my bed and hit the bed with her body and let me know that she needs attention.

 

     Now I find myself calling out her name while I am driving into town to get the mail and she’s not in the car. I look over at her dog-bed and see that she is not there. Sometimes I turn around and look for her, but she is not with me because she is in the kennel in heat. At bedtime, Quilla and I have a routine of sharing a package of Ritz cheese crackers, three for her and three for me, but my bedtime routine is missing a special friend, and the crackers don’t have that special appeal. But her heat will end soon, and she will probably be pregnant again with her fifth litter.

 

     Thank God for this special relationship; Quilla, The Princess, will be back in my room soon. When the time comes she will most likely drop her first puppy in my bedroom, as she has done before.

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