My mom said if she could make a bumper sticker it to put on back of cars, it would read ‘live like Eben.’ I am crazy. I am crazy for seals. One tried to kill me once…it drug me out to sea and my dad chased after it and pulled me back to shore while the seal tried pulling me back out with it into the wide open ocean. When my dad pulled me out of the water, my head was in the seals mouth. my mom ran up and pulled open the jaws of the seal and pulled my head out. True story. What are you crazy about? That even when it tries to kill you or hurts you or disappoints you, but you don’t give up on loving it? She says that’s one reason why she’d have a bumper sticker that reads ‘live like Eben’… I don’t need a sticker but I need Three Dog Bakery, and actual seals. My mom says that i love fiercely and that I’m the only one in her life that loves her more than she loves herself. I’m not sure why some humans think dogs are lesser than humans, when we actually love even harder sometimes than them. One of my doggy dog joys in life has been teaching my brother Lassen to become a seal hunter. I know if there was an add on google for ‘seal whispers’ we’d be the brothers for the job. There’s the Dana point harbor, the sacred place of seals that my mom takes us throughout the week. We have officially taught our dog friends to join in on the seal hunt and we all run down to the dock where the Catalina express boat is to look for them. It always feels like that song ‘Who let the dawgs out’ should be playing as we run down the dock. This Easter, something happened that was way better than a sea world show, a large seal hung out with us for 10 minutes while we stood on the dock and he stayed looking up at us even while i freaked out screaming my frenchie scream. He was determined to stay in the moment with me taking me in as i took him in. It was like my Make a Wish foundation dream came true.

I want to confess some things. I know you’re not a person that wears a funny white dog collar and black outfit, but I feel close to you, I mean you’re reading my story. Here it goes… I try and hump my bro man Lassen and I want to confess how I want to take control over him. Also, when he does knotty things, I run up and nip at his face to tell him to stop. Also, my parents believe I want to kill the seals for seal tacos, but I’m not confessing to anything and will leave in you suspense. This is less of a confessional, but more of me telling on my good judge of character. According to mom, I’m highly intuitive and the sensitive type. That’s what my tender account would read according to her. We have a bad dawg living next door. She’s been mean to my mom. My mom laughs because every time this woman walks by our home I growl and bark. I don’t even need to see that it’s her when she walks by, i can smell the bad dawg in her. I don’t bark or growl when anyone else walks by. I hope caesar Milan gets ahold of her.  My mom asked me to confess on the behalf of her that she sometimes spends too much time looking at her phone. She says she goes on the phone trying to drown out the guilt feelings for not getting stuff done, but then creates more guilt feelings for wasting time on her phone…i don’t understand this in humans. Sometimes when she’s on her phone, I mean glued to the thing, I walk right up to her and stare at her and wag my tail until she looks up …then i run into her arms wagging my tail like its nobody’s business. I only know how to be in the moment. That’s my job to remind you humans. 

I’m almost 12 years old and according to my mom, I’m still the most calm and sweet frenchie in the whole wide world.  I’ve been fighting cancer for almost 3 years, and I’m an older gentleman for a French bulldog. My mom giggles when she’s carrying Lassen home from the walk and I’m still the one she’s walking on the leash.  I still do hikes that are 6 miles plus when many people tell my mom that their younger french bulldog struggles to walk around the block.  Im going to do one more big hike with her. Where do you think it should be? She hopes to get some of it filmed to remember, but i don’t care about being famous, i just want to be as I’ve always been, ‘Eben, the traveling french bulldog’.  I’m so glad I was never a famous instagram influencer. i guess all i care about is influencing dawgs to spend more time in nature and those they love, oh and to never giving up when life’s hard like when you battle cancer. Oh ok, I do consider myself an influencer for seals. The most important thing in the whole wide world is spending time with my family. i love them more than anything. Lassen likes to try and go home with strangers, because he loves the whole world so much. I, on the other hand need to see my parents at all times, because I’m what some call a true family man. I love my parents fiercely. There’s these moment in the morning that feel complete and whole, they are what mom calls them, ‘sacred moments’ that feel like everything is as it should be. They are the sweetest part of each day for her. Lassen and I cuddle with my mom and dad and It’s the 4 amigos all cuddled up together. Then, mom and dad have their morning coffee and I’m sure you can witness it if you walk by the windows seeing them dancing and Lassen and I jumping up trying to dance around them to some music. This is what life is about….I am here, they are here, we are all here together. There really is so much love between the 4 of us Amigos. I love my Daddy so much, and well I truly am a momma’s boy. There’s this line Dad sings from a Jack Johnson song, ‘we share the same soul, oh oh oh’ and references to mom and I, because well, he knows how much we love each other. My mom once read an article about the ‘once in a lifetime dog.’ She told me thats what i am to her, Im her once in a lifetime dog. 

My mom was listening to a podcast as we did our 15 hour round trip drive to my bi-weekly cancer infusion. In the podcast, author Ann Patchett was interviewed. In regards to one of her friends Ann says, “As it turned out,  she and I needed the same thing, to find someone to see us as our best and complete selves. Astonishing, to find this kind of friendship at this point of life, or at any point of life.” When Mom heard it, she was like ‘Yes, that describes Eben and I…as it turns out, Eben and I needed the same thing.” Ann went on and said, “The question is not how long you live, it’s can you remember that you are alive. That’s it. I am alive this is astonishing. If i had my own religion it would be this… we are in paradise, the question is whether or not we can see it. could we see it? or were we always straining so much in the future of our own life or in the afterlife that we can’t see it…. That we are to live now. These are precious days.” Really, this is it…to live in these precious days. I can’t tell you how many days i hear my mom mumbling to herself how much stuff she has to get done or how much time she knows she’s wasted, how much the days seem so long and the months seem to fly by in a blink of an eye. There’s all the guilt and shame feeling like she’s not getting enough done because there’s just so much on the human plate, while feeling like she’s living in the center and doing somewhat enough. She looks at me and Lassen in the midst of all the conflicting human feelings that rumble around in her in one day and she knows…yes, these are precious days. 

We walk our hood of San Clemente twice a day. The first walk, I dig my heels in and attempt to have us turn right to go to Three dog bakery, but she makes me turn left and walk to the beach trail. At least there’s seal rock nearby and get a chance to sit on the beach and smell the seals. The second walk is at night on the pier. No dogs are allowed on the pier, so my mom has been breaking bad and being a bad dog but I’m so glad because then I can go sniff for all the seals that are trying to get the fishermen’s catch. There’s a pack of fisherman that greet me most nights, when bro man Lassen and i walk onto the pier and they see us, one yells out every time “there’s the famous dogs!” On the way back from the pier, there’s a green patch where all the rabbits hang out at night. My mom and dad will hold onto our leashes while all 4 of us run like wild Comanches going ‘rabbit hunting.’ The rabbits scatter like their lives depended on it. Don’t worry, we don’t catch them, but I’m sure they get their cardio in most nights! Even when mom’s friends are walking with us they will partake in the ‘rabbit hunting’ and spectators can see a couple of grown women running seriously with their dogs like bats out of hell towards innocent Peter rabbits. Thanks Angie and Murphy for being a part of this.  My mom once read a meme about this girl that ‘strapped her old pug into a baby stroller and then waited for the UPS truck to come. Then when the truck was in front of her house, she ran like a bat out of hell strolling the pug while it barked, just in case you want to know what love looks like’. There has been a few ‘sacred moments’ as Mom calls them (well not sacred to the rabbits), but on different occasions after I’ve had my cancer surgeries (and Lassen had hurt his paw from hiking), I wasn’t allowed to walk for a couple weeks so my parents stepped in for me. One night when I wasn’t allowed to walk due to surgery, mom and dad drove me and Lassen down the street the the green patch where the bunny rabbits were hanging out, hoping they’d get a break from their cardio. Dad picked up Lassen in his arms and mom placed me in her arms and then something special happened, like little kids they started running down the green patch. Yes, they were running towards the rabbits ‘chasing’ the rabbits while we were in our parents arms. This is not the first time they became our legs, just in case you forgot what love is. I know this is what it means to live in these precious days. This is my paradise now. 

Remember, How Wonderful life is while your’e in the world