Fritz is a show stopper with his little paws resting on his bike seat like other dogs with their paws on a vehicle's window sill! I spotted him biking with his family and beeped my car's horn for them to pull over for his must have story. And boy does he have a good
one!
"Miniature Schnauzer's are the best dogs in the world," admits St. Barnabas Anglican Church Priest Emilie. "Fritz is two-years-old, playful, good-natured, easy going, smart, and as you can see from his photo, very cute. He shares his sweet spirit and spark of joy with all he meets."
Fritz's job is the pastoral care outreach worker at his New Westminster, BC church and is an integral part of church life. He brings life, joy and
love to everyone he meets. Parishioners care for him, play with him, and sit with him. He takes care of their neighborhood by cheering the sad, sick or lonely. He moonlights at Senior Care Centers as well as visits homebound people. The parish celebrated his birthday with hotdogs and the daycare's children made him a cardboard house and gifted him a doggie ball.
The parish pup also paw-ticipates in the Feast Day of St. Francis inviting all breeds, sizes and colors of
dogs for a blessing. They also invite the animal charity group PAWS for Hope,
http://pawsforhope.org/ who hold a free pet clinic for the poor.
Last year, Emilie invited a Central American refugee family to live with her for eight months. The family's three rambunctious children (ages 6, 4, and 2) played with Fritz.
"Fritz was patient as the little ones learned to be gentle and kind to him," said Emilie. "I think he was the best part of
their lives during the hard, first few months of adjusting to a new life in a foreign country. The family speaks Spanish so he picked up a few new words!"
Patti and Emilie are active cyclists and use bicycles for transportation to work and around town.
"When Fritz arrived, I paw-chased a bicycle Buddy Rider, so he could be part of our cycling life," said Emilie. "He enthusiastically jumps up and down when we say, ‘Buddy Rider'! We
frequently bike to our favorite heavily-treed park where Fritz spends hours doing loop de loops after squirrels, and ridiculously leaping over fallen logs twice his size, chasing long-gone squirrels until he is frothing at the mouth. Thankfully for us and the squirrels, he has never caught one.
The benefits of having a dog are endless. Being in a deep relationship with one means that we are even more deeply connected with all of God's creation. We are invited to love
Fritz as he is, not in any other way, as a four-legged one, a perfect creature, and to care for him in ways that will make his life carry on until its end in the fullness of his own dogginess. With him, we are invited to remember how big, beautiful and vulnerable this whole world is and to love unconditionally like he does.
Fritz is such an important part of our lives, that we are planning for him to paw-ticipate as our ring bearer at our marriage.
Fritz
enjoys accompanying my fiancé, Patti, to the community choirs that she conducts," said Emilie."He is usually quiet and well behaved, but one time he was sent to the car for howling. The only other naughty thing was ‘digesting' an entire New Yorker magazine!"
