Paws and Reflect
- Elizabeth Reece
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
Article: Inside Worthing, Issue 57, June 2025 with Clive Leach and Miss May supporting their work with Pets as Therapy and Jonnie as the PERMAH Pup of the Month. (Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment, Health)
Jonnie was born on the streets of Sharm El Sheikh.
She is a true Baladi. Arriving to live with me in France through a series of incredible coincidences. In late 2023, bringing a dependent into my chaos was an insane notion!
And yet, with her ‘Dobby the House Elf’ ears, her lopsided grin and her sweet but precocious
temperament, the angel wing markings on her back assured me that she was the gift that I didn’t know I needed.
When the temperature dropped below zero, I clung to her for warmth in my uninhabitable
farmhouse, looking into her big brown eyes, I knew we had to get moving.
We made our way to the Herault in the Southwest of France. Thankfully, the weather was
unseasonably warm for January and I took this time to build a solid connection with my
unmanageable but adorable street dog.
I needed to recover from a series of shocking events. She needed to settle in with a safe and present human. We had both been through a lot!
We had the wild countryside of rural France to ourselves. The mountains and the lakes. We hiked together. She slowed my thinking, forcing me to be present in those moments. She dawdled along, sniffing flowers and tearing off unexpectedly to find something that smelled good. Without her, it might have been tempting to curl up and sleep away the nightmare of 2023.
Without her I might not have noticed the beauty of the situation in which we found ourselves. The wonder of being lost together for hours in nature, under endless blue skies and illuminating starry nights. I would never have seen the Fireball meteors or collected the driftwood while she paddled in the lake.
I might not have healed and recovered. Thank you, Jonnie.
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