mowgli

over the past few months, ander and i have encountered a particularly calm, large, curly-furred dog leashed at the coffee shop near where we attended tae kwon do. (that feels so strange, referring to it as "having attended," rather than "still attending." we have no sense of if or when that school and the adaptive program will resume in the future. we can only hope that it will. so much of the world has been disrupted already, and it's going to change even more.)

each time we came out of class we would look for the dog. ander was pleased that the dog never seemed to bark or jump or lunge or even, frankly, to stand up from its prone position on its blanket or on the ground. each time we saw him we would come a little closer, ander always a little hesitant to test a new boundary line. and slowly over time, oh so slowly, always with my gentle reassurance and encouragement and modeling the action and letting ander decide when he was ready, he actually reached out and petted the dog. ander was especially brave one day and let the dog sniff him with a soft nose; he was rewarded with a gentle lick on the fingers.

we were fortunate to meet the dog's human companion, who said the dog's name was mowgli. having a name we could refer to made it even more of an exciting part of our saturday mornings to look for mowgli and offer a pet on the head.

i don't know if we will ever see mowgli again. i'm glad we have a photo, though, that we can look at when we talk about our fond memories of him.