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OCTOBER 2004 |
An update on the chocolate Labradors, for those who have been following their story; Jasper and Sam have just celebrated their first birthday - a quiet affair - mainly because we got the day wrong. We thought it was the 31st August, but when we checked their pedigree certificates we discovered it was the 29th and we’d missed it. Having made mention of pedigree certificates, I would like at this point to reassure any worried vet that we will not be asking you to perjure yourself by signing these documents for submission to Crufts, and to further reassure any breeders of chocolate Labradors that the boys will not be polluting the gene pool, they have had their little operation.
And that leads me on to the two things about the boys that I want to focus on in this article: that they’re not perfect, and that despite being twins they are not alike; Jasper is tall and slim, Sam is chunky. They are a million miles from the matched pairs of Dalmatians bred to run behind the private coaches of the aristocracy in the eighteenth century. They are imperfect because they don’t meet the Kennel Club regulations for chocolate Labradors, they have too much colour variation, in particular Sam. A friend wrote to him recently, ‘be of good cheer little multi-coloured labrador’; on reflection we perhaps should have called him Joseph, in honour of his coat of many colours. In Jasper’s case, it’s the legs that let him down - too many blond hairs amid the dark chocolate. It’s a good job there aren’t breed standards for human beings, because I don’t think many of us would pass; I certainly wouldn’t! Not that any of this matters when we look at them, we see them - not a breed standard. They are loved unconditionally for what they are, not what they should or could have been, we see them, not some breed standard with which they fail to comply.
So many of us find it easy to give and receive unconditional love from animals, yet find it harder with human beings, and find it harder still to accept that God, who knows all of our faults, imperfections and failings could love us unconditionally, but the miracle is that he does. If we have ever experienced unconditional love towards someone or something then what we have to realise is that this is the way God feels about us. If only we could accept that self-evident fact how different our lives could be.
Alan Harper - Oct 04