Yesterday we went to yoga class in Marin as she never likes to go alone. As you can imagine, I can do a mean down dog and she needs a lot of help. As we were stationed on our mats we looked around at the rest of the class who were mostly women and a few really macho guys. Now don’t get me wrong…I think it’s great that the guys try to keep up with us but lets face it they are just losers when it comes to yoga. No matter what they try to do they look ridiculous. They wear the wrong clothes and they sweat all over us. I had to do several roll overs just to get the yucky sweat off of me that some neighboring guy had left on my back.

What really got our notice, however, were all the tattoo’s on the beautiful and very young women. Some of these tattoo’s covered all of their arms and continued the story on their backs and down into their yoga pants. I wanted to nip those pants down just to see the end of the story.Luckily for her I remained on very good behavior. One young woman had a very long series of words on her arm that we both kept straining to read. I could see “wanna” and she could see “ado” and we both knew there was more to the story.As I spent more time observing her I thought she looked like a nice girl who was attractive and very good at down dog which is my general criteria for judgement. She thought she looked a bit sad which was true. During the class we put the letters together as if we were contestants on the game show on TV she never lets me watch.I got some and then she got some. Finally, at the very end of the class, we agreed on the phrase which was, “I wanna be adored.”

Wow! What a lot of work for a fairly regular phrase. I couldn’t believe this girl had taken up her entire arm with this phrase. What will happen if she wants to make another statement? What if she comes to a place in life where she does feel adored and then what? What if she gets a bit older and realizes it is all right to say ” I want to be adored” rather than “I wanna”? Obviously this arm writing occupied both me and you know who for a very long time. As a matter of fact for the entire class period. I was a bit upset for this young woman and I know she was as well. We both talked about it in the car on the way home. She was so upset and perplexed she let me sit on her lap and she opened the window for me. As most humans have realized by now we dogs just love riding with our noses out the window of the drivers side of the car. We like this for many reasons but the biggest one is that we can smell all of the world in one nostril and then blow it out the other one. This is a lengthy process for dachshunds for reasons I am sure you understand.

People sometimes forget they are only given one body for their travel through a lifetime and that words we write on it will be there forever so we better be darn sure we agree with these words and that we will commit to believing them far in the future. Far longer that we can actually realize. ” I wanna be adored” may change when we are 40 or even 50 to ” I vant to be alone” or “I want to eat dinner” or “I want to be hated”! God only knows what we will want in 20 years. I have a problem with 20 minutes as all I ever think about is what I am going to eat next. I torture her with food ideas by sniffing around the kitchen when she is cooking and looking up at her with my most adorable tilted head look, my teeth glistening as my lips are open just a bit. She can’t resist me when I do that and she gives me whatever it is she is making for herself that little pig girl!

Anyway, back to yoga class and the young woman. I want to adore her now so she can have that sentance erased from her arm before it is too late to do so. I can’t adore her as I am only allowed to adore one person and you know who that is so I am searching for someone to do so. If you have an opening in your adoring part , please let me know.