yuwipi

There's a church next door to the building in which I live and work. Our property is at the end of a dirt road on the edge of town. Unrecognizable cars sometimes circle around to throw their trash bags in our dumpster. Evidently, a puppy was dumped last night.

Two guys are making repairs on the church. The whimpering puppy belonged to neither one of them. But one of them offered to take it home tonight. He needed a puppy for a yuwipi, a healing ceremony. The Lakota participate in a yuwipi when they seek the source for some sort of negativity in their life and, hopefully, its cure. The puppy comes into play because dog soup is made.

"Wait, are you serious?" I had to make sure he wasn't joking around when he told me this, as he is wont to do.

"No, dog soup is consumed. The broth is kind of greasy."

"But why can't they just take one of the random dogs running loose around town?"

"The dog has to be just the right size and age."

He then told me a story about how his name once came up in a yuwipi. He was fired from his job two weeks later, and he hadn't even been present at the ceremony.

And then there was the story of another man who was excused from a yuwipi for arriving drunk. During his walk home, the man heard footsteps following him down the dirt road. He would turn around only to find he was alone. He continued to hear the footsteps, which sounded more like it was a cow or a deer following him. Still, he was by himself on the path. The man began to run, but the animal kept pace. He then looked down to find his feet had turned into hooves. By the time he made it all the way home, his feet had returned.

The church is just outside my bedroom window. It's quiet out there now. The construction guy must have taken the puppy home.