Buddy Boy Our Protector

This is Toasty.

I like to call him my Buddy Boy.

He came into our lives when he was nine weeks old. A little French Bulldog who had already been given a difficult start. He was born with a genetic defect in his left front leg. It is smaller than the others, and because of it he walks on three feet instead of four.

But Toasty doesn’t know that.

He just moves through the world with what he has, the way dogs do. No self-pity. No hesitation. Just forward.

Over the years he has had a few moments where play got the better of him. A jump from the couch. A tumble with his sister. A sore neck that needed rest and a little time.

This time is different.

The pain has stayed longer than usual, and we need to bring him in for an MRI to understand what is going on. We are hopeful, but like anyone who loves a dog knows, we simply want him comfortable and well again.

For now, our job is simple.

He receives his medications tucked into pill pockets. Beth and I carry him up and down the stairs. We sit beside him on the floor. We lay near him while he rests, gently rubbing his back and neck.

The medications help, of course.

But Toasty doesn’t  know anything about that.

What he knows is presence.

Toasty has always had an uncanny sense about people. When I have been unwell, he has been there before anyone even says a word. Once, during a moment of intense pain, when I had dropped down to my hands and knees, he quietly came underneath me and helped prop me up.

He just knew.

So now we do the same for him.

This photograph was taken a couple years ago. I had always thought of it as a simple picture of Toasty standing guard in the house. Our little protector.

Looking at it today, with the angel beside him, it feels like something more.

A quiet reminder that strength often arrives in small, steady forms.

Toasty has never seen himself as anything other than who he is.

And that has always been more than enough.

This one is for my Buddy Boy.

“All things of creation are children of the Father and thus brothers of man.”

— St. Francis of Assisi

Talk soon...

G