I happen to be the proud owner of a beautiful long coat German shepherd dog. Yanna has taught me many wonderful lessons over the last 6 years. Lessons on life, love and the pursuit of happiness have all come out of this special relationship.
Recently, we were outside working and Yanna was displaying one of her character defects quite boisterously. She is a stick hound, ball hound, rock hound, she is just a HOUND when it comes to retrieving. We were digging holes for fence posts and she kept bringing over the ball, trying to entice us to play. We had a friend working with us whose boundaries are somewhat flexible and of course Yanna, who can smell a sucker a mile away, made her the focus of her hounding.
Jill (not her real name) kept mumbling what a pest Yanna was as Yanna persistently put the ball near her. I began to watch and noticed some very interesting things. If Yanna put the ball down just where Jill could see it, Jill would mumble but would not pick it up. So, Yanna stood in the way and put the ball where she could see it, and Jill mumbled at Yanna and pushed the ball out of the way with her foot. This provided some temporary entertainment for Yanna but what she really wanted was for Jill to pick it up and throw it. I watched as over the course of 30 minutes Yanna figured out that all she needed to do was drop the ball inside the hole that Jill was digging and Jill had to pull it out and when she did in her frustration–Yup–you guessed it, Jill threw the ball. Yanna continued to bait Jill over the course of the next couple hours having a grand ole time fetching.
Now–I am not the kind of person that attaches all kinds of meaning to things that animals do but I was amazed at how Yanna was able to systematically, through trial and error, figure out how to produce the desired response in Jill. It made me wonder–if I were that observant and goal oriented. If I were as secure as Yanna in my being that I did not take rejection personally. If I could persevere with that intensity, would I have more success in receiving out of life what I desire?