It has taken me a lifetime of trying this and that, and of fighting shy of the many traps that the system offers, everyday traps like marriage, employment, politics, food, alcohol, drugs, fame, success, wealth, etc. etc. -- to realise that nothing really matters but love. That's the one thing that can make this thing called "life" worthwhile. Trouble is, it seems all but impossible to achieve, except in the most transient way, between two human beings! Ego, resentment, distrust, boredom, power-tripping, manipulation, sex, and suchlike human fallibilities quickly get in the way of human love and block the flow, shut off the tap.
And that seems to be where dogs come in! Somehow, they have the talent of offering unconditional love to us poor human folk. What a priceless offering! Literally priceless, because it's so freely given.
I'm not at all sure that they can do that with one another, in fact I really think they can't, probably for reasons similar to those I've just mentioned that get in the way of human love. So what does that say about love? That it's difficult to love what's too much like you, just as it's difficult to love yourself? That ego obstructs love in the canine species just as it does in our own? Probably that's it.
To me the most important thing about Seppalas is that unconditional love which they offer. Not how fast they can or can't run. Not whether or not they can win races for a few mentally constipated jock elitists. No, Seppalas are all about LOVE. It's a bit sad that it takes courage to admit this simple fact. People are pretty scared of love and commitment these days, and talking about those things is apt to let you in for some heavy ridicule. Nevertheless, anybody who's willing to let these dogs out of the kennel and into the house will quickly discover what I'm talking about.
On the evening of 2nd January, dotCanada's "King" server experienced a catastrophic failure in which its "FAT directories became unstable," taking the server down and rendering the files on its hard drive unrecoverable -- apparently. It took the SSSD Project website, SledDogBlog, and Legacy Sleddogs Online newsletter with it. All have now been restored from a month-old backup, but anything entered for the last four weeks has been lost. I've done a lot of revision work on the Project website in that time...
Up to this point I haven't been saving copies of MovableType entries. Live and learn! Things are still chaotic, and this entry itself is in the nature of a test, as up to this point, though user access has been restored, I've been unable to edit and save anything or to upload new files, as the webhost was "experiencing some permissions problems on the recovered files." If I can save and publish this entry, it represents a giant step back to functionality.
Internet connectivity and communication are great things, but boy, have we come to count on them -- and when things go west, the result is chaos, destabilisation, and emotional upset! Well -- would YOU like to repeat all the work you've done for the past four weeks -- assuming you COULD???