Getting There

Kayley Paylor

10 hours ago

3 min read

Updated: 3 hours ago

There’s this emperor, and he asks the shepherd boy,

“How many seconds in eternity?”

The shepherd boy says,

“There’s this mountain of pure diamond.

It takes an hour to climb it.

And an hour to go around it.

Every hundred years, a little bird comes.

It sharpens its beak on the diamond mountain.

And when the entire mountain is chiseled away,

the first second of eternity will have passed.”

You must think that’s a hell of a long time.

Personally, I think that’s a hell of a bird.

This is a parable from the Grimm Brothers, told in the Dr. Who episode "Heaven Sent". Compositionally, the episode is nothing short of a masterpiece. Rarely have I seen such raw emotion and power captured on the screen.

This is that to which Gallifrey's name harkens. It perhaps is easy to look at her name and shrug and put it down to another nerdy name. I can just hear other people in the breed decrying us naming another of an ancient breed after another nerdy reference. Koraidon was named by his child. She wanted to name him after a Pokemon. After all we went through with Korai, the least we could do was let his child choose the name she wished. She picked a name associated with confidence and loyalty. While the name certainly has meaning and is special to Maddie, it ultimately is a nerdy reference.

Gallifrey's name is so much more than that. She is the first of my second generation of breeding - a journey that has taken me much further than I ever dreamed. Little has been easy since 2024. I've lost friends who have never told me why. I've walked away from friendships. I've seen betrayal and hardship and the truly ugly nature of life. Far far more often than I ever wish on anyone. We have had insults flung at us that I simply cannot imagine saying to any living person.

In "Heaven Sent", the Doctor is trapped in a loop and ultimately faced with a decision - to abandon his principles out of fear and exhaustion or forge a way forward even when there seems to be no way forward. This has been much on my mind. Do we give in? Or do we find a way forward? Even when a way forward looks impossible.

The only way out is through.

This is what the Doctor endures in order to reach his original home - Gallifrey. Gallifrey is not welcoming. It is frought with conflict. But, at the end of the day, it is still home. And he endures unspeakable torture to get there.

Our Gallifrey's registered name is In Stride's Getting There. As always, her registered name is taken from the canon of musical theatre. In this case, it's from the musical In Transit, which was Broadway's first and only a cappella musical.

There are a handful people out there that know all that happened behind our G Litter. They know the full story or perhaps much of it, or bits and pieces. Ultimately, I will be forever grateful that the litter came to fruition. Beyond that, it is one of the sole examples I can think of in the dog world of parties working through conflict and coming out the other side stronger and with a better understanding of each other. I don't have much faith in that at the moment. Truth be told, I don't have much faith of anything in the dog world currently.

But I look at Gallifrey. I remember the story behind her. The story behind her name. And it gives me hope. And right now, I need hope.

So this is what it sounds like

To be list’ning for a moment

To tune out chatter in my head

And tune into the world instead

And this is what it looks like

With eyes open for a moment

To notice what’s outside of me

To look around and really see

And there’s a strange kind of clarity

A strange kind of harmony

And I stop and breathe the life that’s in the air