Lo and Behold, Jesus Is Coming

It was a warm day in Alpine, California. Chuck, my man friend and business partner in designing children's games, had recently begun sharing my living space. He and I were staying in a motel room. Suffering from a nicotine fit, I walked across to the mall to buy some cigarettes and noticed a sign that read: 'Puppies For Sale.' Loving puppies as I do, I couldn't resist and had to go inside and check them out. Upon entering, the cutest little puppy with four white booties and fluffy reddish-brown fur caught my eye. The moment he looked up at me and our eyes met, I knew I had to buy him. He looked to be mostly golden lab, with a smidgin of german shepard, and a bit of pit bull. He was playing with another puppy who looked to be his sibling but was a light brown color. I asked the shopkeeper about them and he told me that the other pup was his brother. I bought the both of them that day, paying twenty-five dollars apiece.

I returned to my hotel room to declare my total lack of self discipline to Chuck and delight him with these two little bundles of love. Chuck asked me their names and, although I hadn't asked the storekeeper, like a flash their names came to me and without a moments hesitation I told Chuck:

'The one with the white booties is Sunrise and his brother is Bill.'

The following day we took the puppies home with us to Palm Springs. For the next few weeks, we cuddled them and laughed at them and tried to potty train them. After we had had them for around three weeks an incident occured that was quite extraordinary. What happened was totally out of the realm of any previous experience I had known with animals. After that incident, I realized that my puppy Sunrise was a very, very special pup.

The incident occured on a trip to Utah that Chuck and I had undertaken around three weeks after bringing the puppies home to Palm Springs. We had bought a travel trailer and were pulling it back from Utah when Chuck stopped to let the boys, (we affectionately called the puppies our boys), out to go heed natures call. Upon returning from his walk Sunrise was shaking violently. I cradled him in my lap to pet and comfort him when suddenly, miraculously, out of the blue, I could read his thoughts. They were clear to me in my mind. I could hear him think. His little golden voice that trailed through his mind came to me as clear as direct sunlight through a pane of new window glass. When I used my mind to speak back to him, he responded very naturally, just as two old friends might speak had they been engaged in an intimate conversation traveling across country in the privacy of their own car. This was, or course, at first, exceptionally hard to fathom. Sunrise and I had this crystal clear ESP. Together, we were communicating. I could understand him and everything he told me.

The moment of realization was just that, only a moment. Just for that few seconds for the discovery to sink in and try to make itself at home in my mind. When Sunrise spoke I noted a tremor in his voice that coincided with his shaking. He spoke to me in a terrified voice.

'Mom,' he said, 'I have a dangerous mission. When I grow up, I have to tear Satan to shreds for my master.'

'Who is your master?' I wondered outloud in my mind to him, knowing dogs usually consider their owners to be their masters, and that I hadn't given him a mission or tried to define our relationship with me as the master.

'Jesus.' he said.

'Oh!' was all that I could reply.