Making Your Own Path

You can learn things from huskies.

For one, I learned that if you’re pretty and fluffy, people will randomly compliment you as you walk down the street.

Okay, maybe I already knew that one.

But I have learned just how smart a dog can be. My childhood dog, Chopper, was a lovely and loving dog. He was not, however, by any stretch of the imagination a smart dog. Truly.

Coach isn’t exactly Einstein, but he’s pretty darn smart. He can certainly communicate with me. This morning, for example, after our 7:00a walk, he made it very clear—in fifteen minute increments—that he’d like to go back outside into the snow.

Seriously, he’s like a snow-plow.

He does this by walking into the room, looking out of the window at the snow, turning to me until I look at him, and then huffing, loudly.

Huskies aren’t subtle.
Today, I dug out the snow shoes, and we went to the local baseball diamond, looped around the big field surrounding it, and then wandered off into the woods and along the power lines. It was a long trek, and the snow was untouched.

When we started, I was in a pretty sour mood. Every time I look online these days, it’s like another layer of an onion is peeled away to show me some new horrible level of bigotry and intolerance empowered by the noise from the south.

But Coach loves the snow. He made his own path the whole way. He leaps his way through the snow, with little hops that blast the snow aside, and then, when he gets too far ahead of me and I call him back, he reluctantly comes racing back along the same path he just made, which is now nowhere near as hard to travel, lets me pet him, and then races off down the path he made—easier still, now—and then starts forging anew at the end of where he’d been.

Blazing the way? Hard, but worth it.

Moving back where you came from? Disappointing, and far easier.

Getting further ahead by walking the paths already made? A pleasure, and once again joyful to start blazing ahead from where the path left off.

Like I said, Huskies can teach you things.

Blaze on, folks.