Synchronicity

Well, it turns out Jazz isn't quite the perfect fit to our family as I mentioned earlier. Her only downfall is that she's a puppy and we are, evidently, not puppy people. Jazz and Shandi are polar opposities. Shandi is calm, relaxed and laid back...Jazzy is go-go-go all the time. Shandi gently and slowly eats her dog food...Jazz gulps hers down while barely taking a breath. Shandi likes to lay and chew on her squeaky ball...Jazz would prefer hers whipped down the hallway and bounce off the walls so she can race after it and slide around the corners. As I type this, Shandi is asleep at my feet and Jazz is checking out the buffet that's contained in the cat's litter box ("Jazzy, NO! Jazzy! Jazzy, come here! Put that down! PUT THAT DOWN! That's disgusting! There's aren't tootsie rolls!").

The past week of my life has felt like it's non-stop. We can't trust Jazz to be alone anywhere in the house, so if she's out of her kennel, we have to keep an eye on her. I feel bad keeping her locked up, but it's the only way I can get a moment's peace. Even in the mornings, I can't even get a pot of coffee made because she's whining to be let out of her kennel and if she's out of her kennel, she needs to go outside instantly or else we'll have a little surprise to clean up. And since we don't have a completely fenced yard, we have to take her outside on a leash. It's been an absolute gong show.

Jazz wasn't here for more than 24 hours when we realized we had made a mistake. Sometimes, the only way you learn something is by experience, right? I contacted the previous owner, but there was no way she was taking Jazz back. She tried to give me heck for wanting to pass Jazz along to another home saying that's damaging for puppies and I thought, "Yeah, what's more damaging? Passing her on to another home that has the time and patience to train a puppy or keeping her here and constantly shocking her with a shock collar because that's the only thing that will correct some of her behaviour?". So why is this post called "Synchronicity"? Read on...

Let me start with a definition: synchronicity is the experience of two or more events which occur in a meaningful manner, but which are, for the most part, unrelated. In order to be synchronous, the events must be related to one another conceptually, and the chance that they would occur together by random chance must be very small (so says Wikipedia). So here we go...I made up flyers to post on various community bulletin boards and was out delivering them on Friday. The idea struck me to check with Bray's pet store to see if maybe they would buy Jazz off us. I stopped in and talked with the owner, but he said he was at fully capacity for dogs. I jokingly asked if he would post my flyer and I was surprised when he agreed to post it for a week. On Saturday morning, I received a phone call from a woman. She said she has been looking for a beagle cross for awhile now. As she was driving to Prince Albert (from Swan River, MB) on Friday, she was daydreaming about names for dogs. She decided on the name Jazz. Then, she stopped in at Bray's to see if they had any beagle X pups. To her disappointment, there were none to be sold. She started to leave the store and that's when she saw my flyer. She said she instantly got goosebumps and knew that this was meant to be her dog. As she was telling me this story, I got goosebumps and I knew that this was supposed to be her dog too. She came over on Sunday morning to meet Jazz and fell in love with her instantly. There was only one catch...she was leaving for Toronto on the 20th for eight days and asked if I could keep her until she was back (she didn't want to kennel her while she was gone). As badly as I wanted Jazz out of the house, I've got too soft of a heart and of course I said yes.

I love thinking about "what ifs" or more specifically, "if ______ hadn't happened" and how connected events really are, even though they appear to be separate. This morning, I thought about all the events that had to take place in order for this woman to find the dog she has been searching for, for quite a while.

- think of all the events that had to take place for the first owner to come into possession of Jazz
- think of all the events that had to happen in my life to make me love beagles (well, not anymore) so that I would choose Jazz off Kijiji
- what if the first owner had decided on some other name?
- what if I had never heard of Kijiji?
- what if we had had a puppy before and knew how to handle them?
- what if Bray's hadn't agreed to put up my sign?
- what if the woman would have checked PetLand instead of Bray's?
- what if I had been sick on Friday and not been able to get out and put up the posters?

Over the years, I've gone over many different events in my life and thought about all the "what ifs" and I've wondered whether significant events would still happen even if the occurrences and experiences leading up to them were different. I've also wondered about what else was supposed to happen in my life, but didn't because of minor events not happening. Maybe I was supposed to be in a car accident, but the driver of the other vehicle decided to stop for coffee and was in the drive-thru at the exact same time as he was supposed to be careening wildly through an intersection? It makes you wonder what we've missed...both good and bad.