Today marks the first full week of not have our amazing child dog in our lives. Our journey with Ginger started at our local shelter on April 2, 2021 – just four days prior to her being scheduled for euthanasia. We had an instant connection to her, but we had no idea while sitting on that bench for the adoption picture the joy and blessings that were to come with taking her into our home that day.

The shelter had already informed us that she had been returned three times and was, at that time, the longest resident. The trip to the vet for the initial health evaluation let us know that she was walking around with shotgun pellets embedded in her hip. The vet also let us know that her teeth were ground down most likely due to being caged a large part of her life, and her attempt to get free was to gnaw on the bars. Her little crinkly and bumpy ears were due to neglect and her suffering from multiple ear infections that were never treated. And the chip registration let us know that she had been a stray several times, with a few of those locations being out in West Texas, which you should know has extreme temperature changes and rough terrain.

But to us, she was just Ginger. And the reason she was “just Ginger” was because you would have never known that her life before us was so incredibly rough, lonely, abusive and neglectful. That sweet soul adopted us, and with that came true loyalty and affection. Each picture that we have shows that she was in love with both of us, and her playfulness showed us that she knew she was getting that kind of love back.

As my husband says, “We could all take a page of learning out of the heeler handbook.” And we have. These are the lessons that we have learned from our beloved, rescued heeler.

• Love hard
  
• Love deeply
  
• Forgive quickly
• Don’t hold grudges
• Don’t let life make you bitter
  
• Be brave
• Be sweet and kind
  
• Protect your pack
  
• Don’t lose faith in others
  
• Look at every outing as if seeing it for the first time
  
• Be loyal to your pack
  
• Smile often
  
• Don’t be afraid to get dirty playing outside
  
• Be goofy
  
• Be excited about your favorite meals
• Enjoy treats
  
• Go for life’s squirrels
• Bark when necessary
• Drink water
• Take naps
  
• See the best in your pack 
  
• Take time to sit outside and watch the day begin and end
  
• Be the reason someone else smiles
  
• Be there when someone is sad
  
• Sleep close to your person
  
• Always tell your person goodbye when they leave, hello when they come home, and goodnight before going to sleep
  
• Live with such a purity that others want to actually be the people you believe they already are
  

Ginger had to leave us very unexpectedly on October 30, 2024. That’s just a full week at the time of this sharing. And from all of the lessons her life taught us, she shared one more with us in her passing: You never know what the morning may bring, so treat each day as the gift that it is. The Bible tells us that we are not guaranteed tomorrow. We are not. But that sweet heeler loved us until the very last breath, giving us her smile as best she could, and licking our face to make sure we weren’t sad.

Yes, we could all take a page out of the Heeler Handbook.