Through the Eyes of the Dog

I have been "baby-sitting" my son's dog for about a month now. This is not the first "long-term sleep-over" for her. Last year we had her while we were pouring over 2,000 sq. ft. of concrete in the backyard; which meant she was cooped up in the house for way too many hours on end. Bella is a 3 year-old Husky. She came to my son as a rescue and should serve as the poster-animal for rescue animals. Bella does tricks, she is well mannered, and says "I love you." She's an all around great dog.

Saturday I decided that I would take Bella (and myself) on a nice walk. When you live in Southern California, there is just some sort of magnetic pulse that beckons you out of the house to enjoy the weather. I bundled up as, although the sun was up, the morning air was still chilly, and I grabbed Bella's leash. She bolted to the front door, prancing at the prospect of going for a walk. Now, I'm a walker and runner, I love to be out, traversing the neighborhoods, the bike paths, and up the streets. Bella was so excited she was yanking me to get going as I set my GPS. Finally, GPS on "start walking" and we were off!

Bella was so excited and began "leading" me on our journey. It was like she was on a mission to show me the world! Her ears were upright and she needed to inspect everything. With every sound throughout the neighborhood she took notice. Every sense in Bella's body was working overtime and there seemed to be an urgency in her to experience something! If she could say more than "I love you," she'd have been saying, "Come on! Come on! Come on! I have so much cool stuff to show you!"

Although I felt like a racehorse being released from the shoot when Bella decided we "were off to the races," the pace that Bella had me going was not my "normal pace." She actually slowed me down. Yes, here was a "spaz" dog yanking me down the street and I'm saying she's the slow one. It dawned on me, it wasn't really the pace that seemed slow, it was the world around me. You see, in Bella's world the world is much too interesting to just pass things by without taking notice. My "normal" pace was not much faster (if at all) than the pace that Bella had me on. What was different was what I was "forced" to see. Bella was so excited to show me "her world."

Honestly, Bella's world is pretty cool. What's even better, is her world is our world too. The leaves on the ground, a rock, the branches in a tree, they all look different when you take a moment to stop and look. Without rushing by or absorbed in the "pumping" music I normally have from my ear buds, I was able to really take in the world around me. Rather than looking at the obvious, "Oh their yard looks nice," or "I like the paint on that house," Bella showed me just how many beautiful, interesting, and disgusting things are out along our path. Most of these things I wouldn't have even noticed, if not for the dog.

This made me think, how many things do we just sail past in a day? How much beauty and awesomeness to we just pass by as we are looking at the obvious? My challenge for you, and myself, is to slow down and think about the world around you from the perspective of the dog. How can we tap into excellence and drive excellence without first appreciating how truly excellent a world we live in?