- A couple of months ago, I wrote about the canine
friend I called the Navajo Dog.
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- About the mystical way she came into my life.
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- Since then, I've heard similar stories of magical
human/pet connections from many readers:
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- The couple in Connecticut who heard a dog howling
outside their house and went out to see what was wrong. Who found
nothing out there, right or wrong, and went back inside only to
discover a bedraggled puppy waiting in their living room.
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- The little girl in Illinois who accompanied her
mother into a mall pet shop for fish food. And came out with a kitten
because as soon as it saw her, the little ball of fluff launched
itself from the crate it was in and landed squarely on top of the
little girl's head. Where it yowled and cried, but never left a
scratch, and where it still likes to snuggle up at night to this
day.
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- The teenage boy in Pennsylvania who heard someone -
or something - calling to him from the woods and found an injured
raccoon. A raccoon that stayed with him as the teen's pet for the rest
of its life. And never once behaved like anything but a friend.
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- The South African woman who awoke one morning to
find a large parrot clinging to the chair before her dressing table. A
parrot that called the woman by name, sang what sounded like an aria
and practically lived on her shoulder for over 20 years.
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- Then there was the California man who'd never been
near a horse but had loved reading about them as a kid. "One day,
while I was driving along the freeway," he wrote, "I got a feeling
that I should get off at the next exit. I did, and saw a sign for an
Arabian horse ranch. I drove to the ranch, and, to make a long story
short, I saw one of those miniature horses running in a corral.
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- "The next afternoon that horse was in my backyard.
In the years since, he's been a great friend. He doesn't eat all that
much, my kids love him, and I haven't had to worry about any of us
breaking our necks while learning how to ride."
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- My favorite, though, is My Friend the Shark
Wrangler. Well, actually, he's a friend, but I never knew he was a
shark wrangler until he called about what I'd written.
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- "Know how some hotels have dolphin pools that people
can swim in?" he said. "And how some people seem to have some kind of
special connection to the dolphins so that as soon as these people get
into the pool the dolphins race over to them and play like they're old
friends?
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- "Well, I love to scuba dive, and one day about 15
years ago that love got me into big trouble. I was in the Navy, taking
some R&R in Australia, diving near the Great Barrier Reef. All of
a sudden, my buddy grabs my arm, and I look up at these two shadows
passing over us."
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- "Sharks?" I said.
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- "Black Tip reef sharks," he said. "My buddy and I
froze, but it was too late. They saw us or smelled us or whatever, and
circled back our way. One of them came right to my side, and I thought
I was dinner for sure. But all it did was nudge me. The other one went
a little farther. Started rubbing against me.
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- "They ignored my buddy and started playing with me.
Zipping over my shoulders. Coming up under my legs. It was like
finding out that somebody's big, scary watchdog loved me!
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- "I stopped being scared and went with it. I even
grabbed one by the dorsal fin and let it pull me. My buddy took
pictures of me swimming around with these two sharks like they were
long lost pets for about half an hour. Until they zoomed off after
something else.
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- "It was so much fun that I was sorry to see them go.
And I could swear that they were sorry they had to leave."
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- He e-mailed me scans of the pictures, so I know this
is true. A man and his two dorsal-finny friends.
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- Animal magic.
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- Connection magic.
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- I should've felt, deep inside my soul, that neither
the Navajo Dog nor I could really be unique.
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- I should've known it would be everywhere.
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- Copyright C 2008 by Larry Brody. All rights
reserved.
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- Author Larry Brody's weekly column, LIVE! FROM
PARADISE! appears on his website, www.larrybrody.com. He has written
thousands of hours of network television, and is the author of
"Television Writing from the Inside Out" and "Turning Points in
Television." Brody is Creative Director of The Cloud Creek Institute
for the Arts, the world's first in-residence media colony. More about
his activities can be seen on www.tvwriter.com and www.cloudcreek.org.
He welcomes your comments and feedback at
<mailto:LarryBrody@cloudcreek.org>LarryBrody@cloudcreek.org.
Brody, his wife and their dogs, cats, horses and chickens live in
Marion County, Arkansas. The other residents of the mythical town of
Paradise reside in his
imagination.
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