"Jack McAfghan: Reflections on Life With My Master" To Be Released by Mid-April 2015

We've been so busy having so many adventures that we had to write about them!  The book will be available in regular and large print by May 2015.

Click HERE to Check Availability

All the training in the world cannot touch what love can teach. An expert communicator, Jack McAfghan writes the memoirs of his four-legged life. This is a love story, first and foremost. From Obedience Training to hospice therapy work, he and his master learn their lessons side by side, inevitably applying what they have learned as their own life unfolds.

Written with an open and informed mind, this book is a story that can be used as an informal study guide for those who are in the process of training a dog, learning to love, or grieving over the loss of a friend.

This story touches everyone who has ever loved. It matters not if they have four legs or two.  Jack leads us to a higher love as he expands our tolerance and compassion for all of humanity. He extends himself to every creature of the earth, every human on the planet, every spirit in the universe and most of all, to the bona fide Master over heaven and earth.

Jack McAfghan 
© by Kate McGahan 2015

VISIT JACK ON FACEBOOK

Dog Lovers Lane

This was the entrance gate at Verde Valley Agility Club's training grounds. 

The people loved dogs, the dogs loved the people, the dogs love the dogs and we all had a great time. 

Lizard Chapter 22: It's All About Love

If a girl can look at a beat-up lizard and think that he is one of the most lovable and beautiful creatures on the planet, what does God and his angels see when they look at her?  If a seemingly-ordinary lizard can be worth many days of her time and her care, what does God want to do for her.  For all of us?  Lizards, sparrows, dogs, people, we are all loved.  We are all cherished.  We are all wanted.

And when it is our time to go, it is our time to go.  She had learned from me and from her father that to linger is not an answer.  To leave in one's prime is quite good.  As she looks at Mr. Lizard and wonders if, maybe tonight is the night when he will cross over, she knows it will be okay.  She knows that wherever he goes from here will be safer and warmer and kinder than surviving the cold-blooded planet he has called home.   

© 2015 Kate McGahan

Lizard Chapter 21: Making The Most of Things

Whether he couldn't or whether he wouldn't, Lizard didn't leave.  In the ninth week they decided to make the most of things. She invited him to join her for Happy Hour. 

While she was writing our book, she read aloud to him and he helped her to edit it. It was really fun for him to hear the parts that were written about him. He said, "I must be about the only lizard anyone cared enough to put in an autobiography." 

Actual Photo of Lizard on the Wall and Our .doc Book

She taught him how to use the computer and he even helped us to type this blog. 

Lizard Chapter 20: Giving Him Permission to Leave

Lizard Sits Beneath the Stucco Wall He Used to Call "Home"

She did not know why Lizard wouldn't do anything of his own accord. He would stay wherever she put him. If she put him on the wall he would wait on the wall until she took him off. If she put him on the bench he would wait on the bench. She wished he would take control to take care of himself and return to the wild, but days, weeks, even months passed. She never saw him eat. She gave him water from the dropper every couple of days. She left him outside all night and he would be in the same place in the same position the next morning. 

One morning she picked him up. She told him that it was really okay if he wanted to return to where he came from. She did not want him to feel prisoner. She said she was happy to help him. She also wanted to know he was free to go. 

She told him how much she loved him. She thanked him for taking care of me and her Dad and her.  She looked at his green and grey scaly skin and told him he was beautiful.  She petted his head and his body and his tail and called him "beautiful". 

He replied, Don't take the log out of another's eye until you take the tree out of your own.  She heard this but did not understand. She thought about the cactus needle she had removed from his eye and how it had hurt him to have it removed. She knew it would surely hurt if she had one--a bigger one--in her own eye.  

She nodded off, with him on the warmth of her arm ...and when she awakened she knew what he meant.  

Lizard Chapter 19: THE LEARNING CONTINUES

Reptiles are the oldest beings on the planet. He said he didn't know about alligators and crocs, but that lizards and snakes and others are very wise and are very old souls. They come back again and again and every time they do they learn more and they advance into higher consciousness. Lizard said he probably wouldn't be coming back to earth again. He felt he had reached his highest point and that is why he felt it was now or never to get his message out to others.  

Even Joey, Kate's other dog, an expert lizard hunter and lizard catching would calmly stand by in a vigil for lizard.  

Both of them seem to be frowning...

It had been almost two weeks with Kate. His destiny seems to have been fulfilled. He could have traveled to a house where they would come after him with broom and dustpan just to throw him in the garbage heap. He traveled, instead, to a place that was a safe haven, a house of respect, respite and kindness. 

Lizard Finds a Slice of Shade Atop the Rose Quartz Rock

Lizard Chapter 18: LEARNING TO CARE and GETTING TO KNOW LIZARD

Each day was the same, he'd get puffed up and alert. Each night was the same: long nights of not moving at all. Lots of times she couldn't tell if he was alive or not because he didn't move at all. She couldn't see him breathing.

Each night she prepared for his death, but the next day would come again, same thing. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday he positioned himself on the side of the footstool by her chair and stayed there.  From just past noon straight through the evening.  He never moved a muscle. 

She put him on soft pretty fabrics to keep him comfortable, but lizards are not like people. They only get their claws caught in the fine strands of the fabric and then they are prisoners of the fabric until someone comes to let them go. So that wasn't working too well.

She felt kind of bad that she hadn't bought a heatlamp for him so she started microwaving a thing full of beans that would stay warm for a long time. She would heat it up and then lay him on top of it after it was just warm to the touch. Still, every night, he looked just like death.

Every night she sang him "Amazing Grace" and stressed the part about 'I once was blind but now I see".  As soon as she started singing, he would start breathing really deeply and she could see his lungs go in and out. He would seem dead until she began to sing and then he would be very much alive. I think he was responding to her voice, I'm not sure what that was all about. 

If She Sang to Him During the Daylight Hours, Lizard was All Ears. He love to hear her sing.

In the mornings she would take him outside and after about an hour he'd start Coming To. The day came when he would start moving his head back and forth, like a compass, when she moved him. Then he started opening his one good eye. He would open it long enough to look at her and to see where she was taking him; to see that she was there, and then he would close it again. 

"What is it that you want?" she asked him while he sat there motionless.  
"Did you come to me for help?"  
"Did you come here to die?"  She got no answer.  
"Is there something you want me to do for you?" 
She sat with him very quietly, almost as still as he was.  
Yes. Yes he said. There is something I want you to do for me. 
"Just tell me what you want and I will do it for you."

He told her he wanted her to write his story. He told her that a life well-lived needed to be written. He told her of all the creatures of the earth that he had come to this world to help cross over the rainbow bridge. He said that he would be crossing over one day too. Him and many many others. He wanted her to let people know that there is more to the world than meets the eye. He wanted her to share his story so that they would know there is more to a lizard than meets the eye; there is more to everything than it seems at first glance.