Never Stuff A Dead Dog

(Written almost a decade ago while I was serving as pastoral counselor at a previous church)

   
    In my twelve years as a staff member in this church, (can it be 12 already)

    I have never written a newsletter article with a more curious title than this.

    I counsel a multitude of people from all walks of life with all varieties of issues. Amazingly, I’ve met with as many as 5,000 persons during my tenure here. And the “wild card” is I’ve never met anyone with the exact same problem with the exact same characteristics. So this challenges me to tailor-make my intervention in every single case.

    And so many men, women and adolescents come to me with memories related to physical, emotional or sexual abuse. I have even counseled Vietnam veterans who have endured the trauma of war, and who are “stuck” in the prison of their pasts. Negative mindsets, obsessive behaviors and dysfunctional tendencies grow in the fertile soil of trauma and abuse.

    Yet the Apostle Paul said, “This one thing I do; leaving the past behind and turning to all that God has planned for me.” So it must be possible to overcome those things which were not our fault, but which, nevertheless, keep us stuck with too intimate a relationship with the past.

    Alan Alda, the well-known actor of M.A.S.H. fame, has a new book out titled “Never have your dog stuffed.” Good book. In one segment he relates the story of his Cocker Spaniel, Rhapsody. It seems that on one particular day, the old dog died, and Alan and his dad made the hasty decision to have him stuffed. Well, they located a taxidermist, and the rest is, as they say, history.

    Mr. Alda writes “We pulled off the brown butcher’s paper he was wrapped in and looked at him. The dog had a totally unrecognizable expression on his face. He looked as if he’d seen something loathsome that needed to be shredded. Nobody in our family knew who this was.”

    My parents made excuses for the taxidermist. He didn’t really know the dog; he did the best he could. We’ll get used to the look on his face.”

    Well, Alan’s father placed “what now passed for their dog in the living room by the fireplace. But it wasn’t long before the family realized that this just wouldn’t do. When guests visited, if Mr. Alda didn’t warn them the dog wasn’t real, they’d freeze in abject terror, and then back slowly out of the room. The canine’s cold stare and vicious mouth convinced the visitors that he was hungry for their flesh.

     Eventually the family put Rhapsody on the front porch. Of course, delivery men were careful to avoid the house at all costs. Our author tells us that “losing the dog wasn’t as bad as getting him back!” He was a constant reminder that things would never again be the way they were. “It wasn’t memories I wanted. I wanted my dog back.”

     The writer muses, “I understand it a little better now, and I see now that stuffing your dog is more than what happens when you take a dead body and turn it into a souvenir. It also happens when you hold onto any living moment longer than it wants you to.”

     “Memory can be a kind of mental taxidermy; trying to hold onto the present after it becomes the past.”

      For Paul admonished us, “This one thing I do… leaving the past behind and turning to all that God has planned for me.” (Phi. 3:13)

By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "Musings"