Dog Gone It! Dog Gone It! That’s what the screen on my cell phone read. The text message was from our oldest son, Matt, who is currently training for deployment with the Wisconsin Army National Guard. He was replying to a text I’d just sent him about our family done having been put down by the vet after getting severely ill last weekend. Matt’s text message might seem a bit flippant or even uncaring, but that can’t be farther from the truth. It was a sincere effort to cheer me up after a heart wrenching loss. Our standard poodle, Schatzie, was an exceptional dog and had a reputation for her extreme docility and devotion. She was so gentle and loving, in fact, that we’d nicknamed her Princess Demento after her amazing ability to let just about anybody to just about anything to her without so much as a raised back hair. She was companion, protector, foot warmer, and solace giver. She was a marvelous pooch, and now she’s gone, doggonnit. I have to admit that Matt’s message did get me chuckling. It was the kind of play on words humor that I’ve tormented the kids with all their lives and now I was getting it, well deserved, back in my face. It did me a lot of good. It also got me thinking about our family’s attachment to Schatzie, in particular my own. She was just a dog, but now that she’s gone I feel as though there’s a huge hole in my life. She gave such a calming presence to the house, which in turned helped to calm me. Countless times a day I’d feel her nose nudging at my elbow, forcing me to stop what I was doing, take a deep breath and accept the affection she had to offer. I can’t tell you how many times I’d absent mindedly pat my thigh to get her attention. Ha. I’m still catching myself patting my thigh even though she’s not around. I’ve been asking myself what message God the Father has for us, for me, in Schatzie’s death. He didn’t kill her, but her passing was certainly worked into his Divine Plan. Why now? Why in this manner? She was a relatively young dog at her nine years of age. The illness that took was unexpected and uncommon. So, what’s up? The day after Schatizie died, I wrote to a friend that the dog was an important part of our identity as Fenelon Clan. Our identity. Hmmm. I wonder how many of us clutch one thing or another – a pet, a person, a ministry – because it somehow fulfills what we perceive to be our identity. I wonder how many of us fool ourselves into thinking that it rightfully belongs to us.    We’re told differently in the Prophet Isaiah’s writings. Nothing really belongs to us after all. We’re merely stewards of the things of this world and instruments in the working of God’s grace and will in the lives of the people around us. Our only goal should be to approach everything in simplicity and humility. All these things my hand has made, and so all these things are mine, says the LORD. But this is the one to whom I will look, to the humble and contrite in spirit, who trembles at my word. (Isa 66:2) Well, we fooled ourselves into thinking that Schatzie rightfully belonged to us. But she didn’t. She was God’s creature. He formed her and she belonged to him, as do all the things of this earth, including us. Dogonnit. This column appeared in the February 19, 2009 issue of the Milwaukee Catholic Herald