Hey, Benny

I have to share something incredible from Benny via his good friend and earth angel. I've been trying to word it myself these past few days, but have felt as if I've been stumbling and inadequate.

Benny

Anybody who's heard the lonesome whine on the highway knows that feeling. That's what Benny has been trying to tell us. I kept thinking I was hearing it, his message, from little Paris who passed away. I kept thinking I was hearing it when I lost my Mookie. I thought I'd heard it when Junior was killed. I have felt a lot of loss....Ray, my cat and his brother, Roy. T-Rex. Little Piggles. There were times when I just didn't think I could bear another day. When Frenchie, my cockatiel was killed by the cats. And, Sally Jesse, my other cockatiel who used to wolf whistle and was given to me by an old lady who thought Sally was a girl. When Petey died, I about died, too. I used to sit out front of the house and yell his name every night. The blue parakeets get my soul the most.

Benny and his friend sat at a beautiful roadside park...watching the trucks roll by like the Emmylou Harris song, Boulder to Birmingham.

Here is what Benny told Patti.

The whole trip with Benny to TX and now back home has a quality I can only describe as magical.  I want to share with you both cause I cannot phathom, yet, who else I can share this with. As you both know, Benny is a powerful communicator.  Throughout our whole trip together many things were answered and settled for me, and my understandings continue to deepen as I slowly get home. It felt like Benny and i spent many many hours in what I can best describe as a kind of 'contemplation' where insights were revealed.

Here is an example that you will both relate with of what I mean.  A couple of hours before getting to Dougs Benny made it very clear to pull over.  I did, pulled into a beautiful park where we both sat together under a tree.  It felt like we went into a medatative state together, and Benny shared with me (as best I can write it) that we are all Heart beings and that is what we want to share with each other.  Real loving changes your life, it changes your action and you cannot avoid pain. The avoidance of pain is the primary motive of those who wish to remain superficial.....intimacy must be suffered and it is the kind of suffering that awakens you, it is joyous if you suffer it most profoundly.  Love has a wall of pain in it, if you do not endure that pain then you make social convention out of it and it ammounts to nothing.  Love is what everyone is struggling with, love is the most profound and the most difficult activity to do.  Love is a wound, it is the hole in the universe, you must become heart wounded, that is the doorway to the most profound life.  Love breaks the heart and that is where the profound spiritual life begins.

At heart, all are One.  At heart, a human is not the slightest bit different from the reptiles, the birds, the elephants, the plants, the trees, the wind, the sky, the microbes.  Apart from their function in conditionality, all beings are the same.  All beings will seemingly part.  All beings will die.  Death is utterly acceptable to consciousness and life.  All life is participation in sacrifice.  You should be humbled by this knowledge.  You cannot breathe without sacrificing self-conscious beings.  Do not be guilty about it. Know it.  You are to be sacrificed.

I don't want to hear a love song
I got on this airplane just to fly
And I know there's life below
But all that it can show me
Is the prairie and the sky

And I don't want to hear a sad story
Full of heartbreak and desire
The last time I felt like this
It was in the wilderness and the canyon was on fire
And I stood on the mountain in the night and I watched it burn
I watched it burn, I watched it burn.

I would rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham
I would hold my life in his saving grace.
I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham
If I thought I could see, I could see your face.

Well you really got me this time
And the hardest part is knowing I'll survive.
I have come to listen for the sound
Of the trucks as they move down
Out on ninety five
And pretend that it's the ocean
coming down to wash me clean, to wash me clean
Baby do you know what I mean

I would rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham
I would hold my life in his saving grace.
I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham
If I thought I could see, I could see your face. 

Live Chat Software

Short on water, but full of love

Today just plain sucked. Our pipes froze due to the winter storm and it was hard to keep my spirits up. I'll admit, I've been pretty down the past few days since losing Paris. I'm just sad. I feel like I let Paris down.

I would love to write about Benny. He is keeping me going right now. He's really 'learning' me how to live life. It's not an accident Benny came into my life.

I got an incredible letter from Patti tonight. She's trying to make her way back to Mendocino through the ice and snow, but still uploading Benny's photos and updating his blog.

There is so much sadness right now. So many animals are being abandoned and it's hard to keep plugging away. Benny has a special message for all of us. I just don't feel like it's mine to tell right now. I've put in a request to Patti about sharing it. Hopefully, tomorrow she'll say it's ok. Just not one of those things you broadcast on your own. It's like finding the Dead Sea Scrolls down by Lake Austin and not knowing what to do with them. One thing I do know for sure, Benny will let us all know how to carry his message.

For now, there are others who need help. There is a girl in LA who's stealing my heart. Her name is Spots and she's out of time. She is beautiful inside and out like a bluenose German Shorthair Pointer. She is as sweet as candy. You can feel her soul right through the computer screen. I have a nice family whom I've written about her. I just have a special feeling.

Chika loving life

Davika is now Chika and her tumors are giving her a problem again. She is the beautiful girl who was on death row at Martinez in the medical ward where they were literally counting the minutes till they could kill her. I saw her face and knew this was a girl who wanted to live. I could feel that all the way from the east bay to Apache Shores!

Chika had a horrible past where she'd been beated with a lead pipe, teeth broken and an infected ingrown foxtail in her jaw. She has a grade five heart murmur which makes for touchy going in regards to surgery. We gave her a very controversial nosode for her tumors, but they still had to be surgically removed. She had a major dental with several extractions and removal of the nasty foxtail.

Rudy adopted her and they go on lovely weekend hikes with her adopted brother, Boom Boom. Rudy is very frightened as her poor mouth has flared up again and she is in need of further surgery.

I know she will pull through. She is a phenomenal dog and a star.

Live Chat Software

Benny's is here and helping tame the wild Texas west

The past two days have been fraught, my new favorite word, absolutely fraught with anxiety and tension. I have to blame the over abundance of animals in shelters, their sad faces begging for a chance to live. They just don't know why their families have dropped them off and abandoned them. They do not know what they did wrong.

There are so many seniors, puppies, cats, kittens, just droves and droves. Speaking of droves, Benny is here. Yesterday, when I was so stressed about all these poor ones I couldn't save..just so dang many..I kept thinking of Benny and how he has held on and hoped. Benny is a seer. He's really more than any other being I can think of. He is in a dog suit, but like a very wise man...almost like I would imagine Gandhi was in person. Just calm and centered. Knowing that he's a part of the universe, but not the whole universe.

Patti and Benny

When he got here with Patti yesterday, I put the pedal to the metal and couldn't get to our meeting place fast enough. One of the stresses had been my old car going kaput. That battery just gave out like I'm gonna give out one of these days..just short circuit on the side of the road somewhere. You'll see me spinning around and around in the gravel like some old deranged break dancer.

Anyway, all day yesterday and more days before than I care to mention, I'd start to go off and have to remember to stay calm for Benny's sake. I can't do him or anyone else any good if I lose it. Benny gets me. Benny gets everyone. He gets letters from all over the world. He has already touched so many lives in just three weeks.

When I got to the Iguana, our meeting place, he was sitting in Patti's back seat. Patti had driven Benny all the way here from California. Patti is a whole other blog. She is as angelic as Benny. I am extremely blessed to have Benny and Patti in my life.

I haven't wanted to write very much on the blog here lately since I lost Paris Hilton. I'm so sad. I feel like I let him down. I found out that the seeds I was using from Tomlinson's killed Paris Hilton. They were old and had rancid fat. I found out that some of these seed salespeople and companies are very unscrupulous. I should have known better, but thought I was giving him quality seed from a reputable pet store. Wrong. Even though I feed the birds chopped up fresh organic veggies, quality pellets and home grown sprouts for birds, I added a seed mixture for what I thought was a well balanced bird diet. I learned the hard way and through the death of my beloved Paris Hilton.

I am turning it loose now. I won't hang onto bad feelings. That's what Benny and the Animal Alliance are teaching me. In order to stay centered and open to direction, I have to let go of the anger. I feel it's necessary to write it down so other bird lovers won't lose their pets as I lost Paris Hilton. I am sorry to Paris.

Further stress came from a small shelter I'd been saving dogs from. I had to borrow two crates from them in order to transport two dogs Reunion rescued from them. I paid the transporter to save these two and Suzie Wong who's now called Mabel. The dogs were taken all the way to San Francisco and the crates only made it back to Modesto where they've been sitting for three weeks. I tried to replace the crates, but it's really easier to home a pit bull than to transport crates from one town to the other.

Bottom line, I got so many stressful emails about the crates today that I'm gonna have to think twice before I pull another dog from that shelter. Same sort of thing happened a couple of years ago when I pulled Pip from a shelter nearby this one. The shelter got very nasty over the Pip incident...fully described in Pit Bull Nation, The Story of Pip. I just don't have the fortitude to pull dogs from shelters whose employees spend their workday criticizing volunteer rescue workers.

Back to Benny. Back to breathing. I got a nice photo of Benny this morning from Doug. He, Benny, is fitting right into the schedule at Doug's. Maybe I can take a page from Benny's book and learn how to fit into the scheme of things in my crazy life.

Live Chat Software

Benny's Path: In Gallup NM

Benny's Path: In Gallup NM: "We arrived in Gallup NM tonight. What a day of contrasts. First we were in the Mojave desert, before noon it was a sunny 70 degr..."

Live Chat Software