Just a couple of weeks ago, we went camping with friends. And our dog.
She takes on an alternate persona when we camp and becomes Captain Camp Dog, and she finally earned the Captain part of that moniker. Several of us were out in the lake, not really swimming but floating in fairly shallow water and just enjoying the day. One friend brought kayaks, and with the assistance of my husband, she gently rowed out from the shore with none other than the Captain nestled in front of her.
My Bonnie lies over the ocean… er… *lake*.
I have to admit that spooked me just a bit. She has a dog flotation vest with nifty handles on the back, and since she’s just not that big, it’s an easy matter to just pick her up like carry-on luggage. She would have been safe in the water, but that’s not what surprised me.
Going backward a year or so, my husband decked her out in that nifty new flotation vest and a float mat meant for dogs. He tried pretty valiantly to coax her into the water, but schnauzers aren’t exactly known for being water dogs, and she wasn’t having any of it. We did blow up the float mat and just let her sleep on it in camp on occasion, but was that enough for her to finally decide to actually go out in a boat? I don’t know, but the Captain finally sailed.
After that, we put her on the float and gently took her out into the water — several times over. She didn’t exactly bound out there like a labrador, but she did seem happier to be out with us than on shore alone. So much so that one of our friends snapped a photo of hubby and I, floating her back to the shore between us. Yep, that’s my sweet camper dog in the photo.
Sure, plenty of clichés apply: you can’t teach a dog new tricks, but at 7, she did just fine. They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, but that’s not what happened, here. The method and the circumstances were different than when we attempted to get her interested last year, so she reacted differently, and it worked. After all, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.
Solutions to difficult problems often require lots of trial and error — and different methods. That’s the reason Captain Camp Dog is no longer a landlubber; it took patience, distraction, a different approach. If at first, you don’t succeed…
Clichés aside, trying different methods until something works can be both nerve-wracking and rewarding. I can’t tell you how many attempts I’ve made to lose weight in the past; I honestly don’t remember them all. Just because I wasn’t successful, before, doesn’t mean the goal isn’t possible; it took the willingness to try yet again, vary my methods, change my mindset, being flexible with what I was willing to accept as success.
When I changed my mindset and my approach, my perspective about things that had previously derailed me or set me back also changed. Life happens; I must adapt. Currently, that means accepting that I’ve put a few pounds back during recent challenges and am in the process of taking them back off. Sure, it bothers me, but the solution is never simply to give up.
Not when I’ve learned that try, try again really does work.