The Blessing of Animals

Written at 9 a.m. this morning:

Every year, St. Andrews Church does a blessing of the animals on a day near his saint’s day of October 4.  It so happened this year that the night before the date of the blessing, Frida suffered a seizure.  We arrived home from our emergency trip into town to see the vet at some time around midnight, at which time Frida seemed to be doing fine, if not exactly chipper.  The vet had examined her and gave her some medicine, instructing me to bring her back the next day, and since the church was just around the corner, I decided perhaps Frida needed whatever help she could get and took her for a blessing.

As you can see from the photos, hundreds of animals were brought by their humans.  Dogs, cats and (as you will see from the photo) the longest white burro in the world all existed peacefully.  Not one tussle or bark or fight during the entire 1/2 hour I was there.  When I commented on this as we left, one of the congregation members standing at the door said, “Perhaps St. Francis had a hand in that.”

I thought you might like to see some of the photos. Frida, by the way, seems back to normal. I’m about to take her back into the vet and will perhaps take my computer and post the photos in the vet’s office while we wait to see him.

The world’s longest albino burro was there to be blessed.

As well as the world’s cutest dog.

Humans with a plethora of kids of every variety.

Collies

and one dog that looked exactly like Diego, but it wasn’t Diego as one dog was all I could manage, and it was Frida who most needed the blessing.

There was some doggie scripture read and songs sung

Doggie friends…

Fashionable attire shown off

The blessings of the animals were done in both Spanish and English. Frida’s smart mom noticed the long English line and that there was no one in the Spanish line, so we were blessed in Spanish. Frida died a few hours later!

And in summation, I feel it is only fair to reveal the secret between the world’s longest burro, just in case you fell for that one. It was, indeed, mother and son and a bit of fortunate positioning on their part. Here is a shot that tells the rest of the story. (Almost)The End.This was the end as I wrote it around 4 this afternoon. Please click on the X one the upper left to go back to the main page to see the final ending.

Addendum:
Written at 7:45 tonight:

The only dog there I didn’t get a photo of at the blessing was Frida.  Unbelievable.  Here is one of my favorite shots of her:

R.I.P Frida, 2004-2016

I was too busy all day taking Frida to the vet, waiting in the waiting room, then waiting for tests, then returning home only to have to make a return rush trip back to the vet. Frida went for her final walk an hour ago at 6:45 p.m.  My last words to her were never truer spoken to any other dog.  “You were a good, good girl.”  She never did one naughty thing (short of eating the cat’s food) that she could help. Good-bye good, good friend.

Her favorite activity was sitting on the dome of my house to survey the neighborhood and bark at intruders. Unfortunately, she was unable to do so for the past year because it was unsafe for Morrie to be up there so the gate remained closed.

This is a photo of Frida the day I found her trotting down the bike lane of the carretera.  She was about a block away, coming toward us, when Joe and I first spotted her and I thought she was a big rat at first.  Surreal that it was trotting straight toward us without veering off.  She trotted right up to me, I picked her up, and she was mine ever after.  R.I.P. dear friend.  We shared a lot of adventures over the past twelve years and even if you let Diego and Morrie think otherwise, you were always leader of our pack.