My Puppy Is My Teacher: Lesson 1- The Walk

My puppy is my teacher: Lesson 1- "The Daily Walk"

Clementine has been with me for almost a month now- everyday I get to know her better- learn her routine, how she acts when she just wakes up, when she wants to eat, when she needs to go out to go "potty", and when she needs to get out her wild puppy energy.

I'm also trying to get her to learn how to take a proper walk. Ceasar the "Dog Whisperer" says the walk is the most important part of a human/dog relationship. It establishes who is the leader. If a dog walks right beside without pulling you forward, stopping behind or "tracking" by stopping to sniff every single thing, if all their attention is on the leader and they submissively walk at your side, taking all their cues from you- you've established the whole dynamic of the relationship.

We are working on it, but now on walks Clementine stops to "track" and pulls to the right and left. She also freezes and stops when she hears something unfamiliar or sees something that catches her attention. She will stand there alert and frozen until I snap her out of it by giving her a tug or whistling. Then it's like it breaks the trance and she can keep walking. She does this out of instinct- but I'm telling her to snap out of it and trust me to keep going- I know, as her leader, that it's nothing to be alerted by. She needs to just focus on me and keep going. I have patience with her (most of the time) but I look forward to the day when I can enjoy her just walking by my side without the interruptions, stops and starts, stubbornness and distractions that she now has a puppy.

How often do I, as the immature puppy, pull to the right and left, stopping to check out everything that catches my eye? How often do I freeze in fear and wonder at every little disturbance instead of happily keeping my attention on my master and leader?

The journey with God that we all take is called "a walk". There are so many parallels I can draw between my walks with Clementine and my walk with God. Another one is that she needs to walk with me every day. She doesn't know how to walk around the few blocks that I take her and come back home safely. She needs me to lead her and keep her from straying before speeding cars and getting lost. If we don't go on a walk each day, she can get a little crazy, the daily walk calms her down, gets her energy out and let's us spend time doing something together.

I've "spiritualized" the term ''walk with God" so much, thinking of it as this grand picture of my life but maybe it is just what it sounds like- the daily, much needed, literal walk and talk with my Father. Where for a while each day I'm not distracted and "tracking", I'm not frozen in a trance, and I'm not pulling forward- I'm simply trusting my leader and we're both enjoying our time together. It may not be smooth at first, but daily, I'll get it and grow up to be a faithful companion.

"Enoch walked faithfully with God…" Genesis 5:24

She's a great pillow

And apparently she thinks I'm a good head rest

Waiting by the door

sitting at a cafe

meeting another puppy

She's loosing her baby teeth :)

and posing with one ear flopped back

My Puppy Is My Teacher: Introduction

I'm convinced of this: God is not dumb. He made babies and puppies so irresistibly cute that normally sane, independent, even hardened adults will find themselves touching enormous amounts of poop and losing uncomfortable amounts of sleep for these little creatures. If you haven't noticed by my obsessive daily posts- I have a new little white puppy. Well she's mostly white with just a touch of little spots on her left ear and a black lip underbite that gives her a cute pouty expression. Her name is Clementine, she's half Great Pyrenese and half Boxer. Clementine means "Mild" in French- and she certainly is a mild one... until... she's not!

I'd been thinking about getting a little companion for a few weeks. Spring and Summer is approaching and a few weeks before getting Clementine, I'd go to sleep imagining a dog and I running around in fields, going on hikes, cuddling, and walking to coffee shops to sit together in the sun and meet cute guys (what! I'm being honest!). I'd decided that my old excuses of being too busy, traveling too much and not wanting to deal with poop, pee and chewed shoes was not as strong as the case for getting a dog. 

So two Saturday's ago I went to the humane society with the intent of getting an older dog- one that had less of a chance of getting adopted, one that had gotten it's puppy wiggles and chews out and was ready to just nap calmly at my feet as I worked and come with me on outings.

That plan fell through when I realized the older dogs there seemed wild when I tried to play with them and too big to control. A puppy started to seem like a better option- one small enough to train while it wasn't already bigger and stronger than me. The first puppy I laid eyes on in the puppy room was calmly laying in her cage- a sweet little white fur ball. I picked her up and she let me hold her like a baby with her paws around my neck. The decision was made then, that I couldn't put her down because someone else would snatch this sweet thing up- so I walked straight to the front desk with her and signed the papers to take her home.

In the week and a half since she's been mine, my whole schedule and routine has changed. Having her is teaching me some pretty deep lessons and helping me glimpse the Father's heart in new ways. I can not imagine how having my own real baby would change my whole perspective if this little puppy is already changing me so much. Parents, I want to take a moment to applaud you! It must be a scary and wonderful thing to love something so much and yet have to sacrifice so much for that very love. To become so vulnerable- that now if your little one is not ok- you are not only not ok but pained to your very core. I guess God tied conception to acts of passion for a reason! Who could be so brave as to decide to take on having a baby if it weren't for the compulsion of passion?!

Anyway, I'm going to write about the lessons she's teaching me. Maybe every few days another lesson will reveal itself and I will jot it down to share with you. Plus this gives me more excuses to post pictures and videos of her doing nothing in particular at all- just being her cute self. (Even that touches my heart, how must God fawn over us for just being???)

PS. As I'm typing Clementine is asleep on the bed next to me breathing loudly and letting out the occasional horrible smelling fart... but I let her stay because she's so cute...yep... God has a great sense of humor.

More to come… stay tuned! (don't forget to subscribe)

The drive home from when I got 12 week old "Perly Mae" from the humane society...
I changed her name to Clementine- much more dignified.

Our first long "walk" consisted of me carrying her the whole way to the coffee shop (funny enough the coffee shop is called Fido) This is her letting a girl there hold her while I ordered.

Some people say "don't let your dog sleep with you!" well, I just don't see how you can't cuddle with something this cute in the room.

My "business meetings" now include Clementine who loves to be held like a baby. She's also a great way to talk to new people who can't help but come up and say hi to her. 

That face.

Huge paws, sweet black lips and a smattering of little freckles on her left ear.