The Best
Mina the Machina
Mina is not dead. This is not a memorial. It is a record of gratitude for what she has taught me over fourteen years and ten months.
Mina came to me in 2011. I was a mess. I have always been a mess, but that year I was fresh out of the service with no idea what I was going to do with myself. We spent every day together after that. Years of days. She learned to read me before I could read myself. Once, sitting with an Army JAG, with Mina at my side and my friend Buddy with me, I broke down in a way I had never let happen in front of people, never in a room like that. Mina took over. She handled the broken man in the suit, and we kept going. We finished the job. We.
She jumped out of planes with me, worked demonstrations across the country to raise money for Spike’s K9 Fund, and she taught me how to take the shocks I didn’t see coming—how to start college at fifty-two and keep my feet under me. She was there for all of it. Every day. Right up until the afternoon she began falling asleep and snoring in class. We all get there. Fortunately, I was lucky to have a kind professor who let her sit with me through my last class as an undergrad.
I write this to say Mina is not a “Dog.” She is a Dutch Shepherd, yes. But to me she is the clearest example I have of how to meet what age takes from us. She can barely walk now. She can barely hear. She can barely see. And still she wakes ready for the day, ready to get after it in whatever way she has left. She still wants to play tug and fight with her nearly nonexistent teeth. She wants to work so hard that she falls asleep like some kind of wild monkey….
There is no better lesson than that.
Mina lives life full. She eats with her whole life. She loves with her whole life. She fights with her whole life.
Mina is a force that moves through life’s troubles without being stopped by them.
Her soul still rises so strongly — it pulls us with her