2 things my dog taught me about giving up

You need to know two things about my dog, Cindy:

1. She's almost blind.

2. She's terrified of everything.

Cindy's an aussie that we adopted away from a farmer after he realized she'd never make a good work dog.

Her second favorite thing in the world is to sit in her dog house where no one can see her.

But her absolute favorite thing to do is...

Run through the woods.

I don't know if you've been around Australian Shepherds, but they get this smile when they're excited, kind of like Border Collies. It'll melt your heart.

Now, our most common walk involves cutting through a patch of woods near my house.

Of course, walking through my neighborhood before we reach the woods scares her. She spends the whole time tugging backwards - not enough to challenge, but just enough to say she's not happy.

But when we get under those trees and I take her off the leash...

She goes wild.

Tongue dangling, rolling through dead animals, eating trash - she's in doggie heaven.

The other day as we approached the woods, I took her leash off early.

I thought she'd dash forward.

Wrong.

She dropped and put her chin on the ground, pointed towards home.

Her eyes stared up at me, wanting permission to retreat.

"You stupid dog," I said, "we've walked half a mile, and we're just 10 feet from your favorite spot!"

And then it hit me.

How many times have I worked towards a goal, only to give it up once I got close?

My problem, like Cindy's problem, is that I don't see very well.

She couldn't see how close she was to her favorite patch of woods.

I can't see how close I am to achieving success.

So here's the 2 things my dog taught me about giving up:

1. When we give up on a goal, we don't get to know how close we came.

2. There's a good chance we're a lot closer than we think.

Stick to it, everyone.

Cheers,

Ben