The lost photo that almost got away.

It is one thing to forget about some pictures and then to stumble upon them unexpectedly and to remember a particular picture and be unable to find it. Sort of like looking for a needle in a haystack when you have tens of thousands of pictures cataloged in five or more sub-directories. That was the problem I had with my last post, The beauty of living with Rottweilers. I knew there was one picture that I had taken of my my wife Jacqueline and her constant companion Axl that I was especially fond of and I wanted to add it to that previous post.

I literally browsed through those pictures more than once without finding it. So I posted what I had and then two days later the proverbial light bulb went off over my head. I had remembered the special occasion that I had taken the picture on. It was on Mother's Day. So I did a search on this blog for "Mother's Day" and there it was. And thanks to digital images always keeping Meta Data records, I was able to find the file name and go back to my hard drive and locate the picture.

Why am I writing to such lengths about just one picture? Because it depicts such a perfect bond of love between one human and her Rottweiler more than anything else. See for yourself.

Mother's Day 2010

One very proud looking Rottweiler and one very proud looking Mom and the smiles says more than words. The photo was taken when Axl was 9-years old, two years after he came to his forever home. I often joke about his brief retirement but the truth is it only lasted about two weeks. That was the time he was in foster care after his first Mom lost her house in a fire. Axl was trained to be her companion service dog and when he got to our home he seemed to know just what needed to be done when he met my wife. And it turned into a good thing for Axl, too. I'm told that service dogs don't do well in retirement because they need to work. Axl is 14-years old now and well beyond his normal life expectancy but he has a sense of purpose and his devotion to his Mom is what is keeping him alive.

That is what the love is all about that I witness every day living with Rottweilers.