"All In"

The thing I admire most about dogs is their absolute abandon to the call of the moment. Without any philosophical eloquence, they just plain live each minute as if were the only one that matters. An open window in the car is an invitation to a full-throttle face massage, a mudhole cries out "4-star spa!", dead fish are the ultimate sushi delight and treeing a squirrel is grounds for elated high-fives all around. Life just doesn't get any better than that!

Our adventures include a race to the river for a 'hydro-euphoric' wrestling match. It can be 20 degrees out and somehow the call "all in" is broadcasted among them, and in they go! No questions asked, no weighing their options first. Polar bears have nothing on dogs intent on a splash fight...even in icy waters.

In the peculiar free-associations of my mind, I began to think about the phrase, "all in." It immediately conjured up the picture of a poker table where one player decides he or she has the hand to trump all hands...worthy of putting it all on the line. Do or die. Throw caution to the wind. Go big or go home...literally. There is always a moment of tension, first for the person waging it all on this one hand, then for your own decision as to whether you have what it takes to beat that hand. Their "all in" might require you to go "all in," in order to stay in the game. "All in" is a scary thing, a moment of complete commitment. No bet hedging to secure a path of retreat.

I'm reading a book, Crazy Love, by Francis Chan and came across this sentence. "God wants to see His children stake everything on His power and presence in their lives." That's an "all in" call. Unlike the dogs, I want to test the waters first. Is it safe? Is is comfortable? Is it in my best interest? Does it fit into my 5 year plan?

Where's the spontaneity in that? Where's the surrendered abandon? If I truly believe I hold the 'hand to trump all hands,' why do I hem and haw when it comes to God? He's either an absolute royal flush worth banking my life on, or He's not. Do my daily choices evidence an "all in" mentality or do I carefully hedge my bets? How about yours? Is His power and presence in your life an "all in" commitment?

Maybe, like the dogs, we need to think less and go with our gut a bit more. To coin a phrase, let's "puppy-up" and dive in when the call, "all in" comes our way.

My dog adventuring days began when Koda was a mere puppy. Eight weeks old and still trying to untangle his oversized paws, we trekked the trail above our house. (Before the rangers got wise to us!) Amazingly he kept up, with an occasional airlift into my arms when his little legs tuckered out. Early in our adventures we met a man with his own puppy, Kadi, a little black lab mix. Koda and Kadi became fast friends, and Rick, Kadi's owner and I began trading war stories. In Rick's case, this was very literal. A Vietnam veteran, he had some heartwrenchers to tell...especially as a dog handler in this jungle war zone.

Rick is a walking encyclopedia about all animal species, but his love of dogs makes him a canine officiado. When asked about dog's sense of smell, he loads me into his "magic schoolbus" and we enter the nasal passages of "man's best friend" to explore the physiology of their scent glands. Dogs' noses sport about 220 million smell receptors in comparison to our puny 4-5 million. No wonder their noses are always at work, sniffing everything in sight...or better said, out of sight. We pride ourselves with our ability to access data from invisible internet waves, but dogs are constantly taking in data from a network that is totally invisible to us! And they don't even need an electronic connection or a search engine! Max's urine is clearly Max's urine, even if he had Alpo instead of Purina brand the night before!

These canine attributes were used (and arguably abused) during the Vietnam War. Dogs were set up as sentries to guard posts, trackers to sniff out explosives or the presence of the enemy, and even listeners to perceive the tiny vibrations of trip wires that triggered booby traps along trails. They lived in the trenches with their handlers, facing life and death situations every day. It is estimated that they saved up to 10,000 lives of our soldiers in Vietnam. About 4000 dogs were put to work. At least 1000 of them died in service, some from wounds, but many more from heat exhaustion, jungle diseases and even snake bites. Only about 200 of these military dogs made it home. The real atrosity was what the US Government did with the remaining 2800 war dogs. Designated as "surplus army equipment," they were either euthanized or given to the South Vietnamese to await whatever fate the invading North Vietnamese deemed appropriate. After risking life and limb with all the other soldiers, that was the best we could do. I can barely write this without crying.

I'm sure their handlers cried too.

Thankfully the US Government has changed their perspective and policy on war dogs. No dog is left behind now and they are recognized as the heroes that they are. Rick gives talks about the contribution that dogs have made in American wars as far back as the Civil War to the present. He has helped create a National War Dog Memorial to honor the memory of these brave canines who so willingly sacrificed their lives to wars of our own making, born of our human inability to get along.

Self-Distortions

Sorry I've been gone so long. I've been sicker'n a dog...no offense to my canine friends. Actually I took their advice for dealing with illness and curled up in a warm spot and slept it off...with frequent trips to eradicate the invading enemy...more frequent than I would have liked, but intestinal flues pretty much call the shots when they have you captive. But that is not my topic for today, so hit the rewind button and let's start over.

Distorted sense of self, that's what Brecky is teaching me these days. She is a 100+ lb. Bernese Mountain Dog who pictures herself as a tiny, fragile lap dog. Big boned like a St. Bernard and capable of taking on any dog who approaches her, Brecky hides on the fringes of our pack as we adventure together. No one watches and evaluates the other dogs as carefully as Brecky does, her entire modus operandi is to stay out of the fray, even if the fray is just playful fun. Hypervigilent to the max. Oh she still makes her own fun sniffing and splashing in the water, but never without her apprehensive eye. Some of this is due to the fact that her younger brother, Lio, (also a Bernese Mtn. Dog), has been laid up from elbow surgery (please pray for the not-so-little guy) and she is adventuring without his gregarious support. BUT beyond his absence, it is Brecky's distorted sense of self that limits her experience of shared adventure. She is a big, beautiful girl with huge brown eyes that melt you, framed by Brooke Shield eyebrows that amplify her every emotion as they dance around her face with expression. She should be the belle of our expeditions, but she literally hides in the shadows.


This got me thinking about how I might be distorting my picture of myself...and how you might be. Perhaps old messages are still defining us. Old nicknames that literally nicked and scarred our sense of self? Failures? I've got plenty of those! Fears of rejection? Dreams we finally gave up on, but never put to rest? Body images that don't measure up to plastic surgery specifications? Sometimes we need others to help us see our distortions... which of course requires that we, unlike Brecky, move into the circle of relationships where we can get that feedback. I like to think I am the expert on myself, especially coming from therapist stock, but I definitely have my blind spots... just like the physical spot on my back I just can't stratch on my own! We all have those unreachable areas...and what a joy when someone else gives relief to that irrepressibly itchy terrain.


Hopefully by now, if you've followed this blog, you've figured out that I am a lover of God. A wise friend once told me that if I truly wanted to become like Jesus, I had to "Give all that I know of myself, to all that I know of God." This calls for growth on both of those fronts... growing in my knowledge of myself, and in my knowledge of God. So as I encounter my Brecky-blind-spots, I need to do whatever I can to shed some light on them so I have more genuine "stuff" to give over to God. Not a generic, one fell swoop, "Take it all, Lord," but a piece by piece, gut-wrenchingly honest, "Here's my stinky fish and moldy bread, Lord, multiply it as You will." Only God sees us as we truly are, given that He's the One who strung our beads of DNA in the first place. He not only wants us to see ourselves fully and genuinely as we are, but He wants us to see ourselves as we CAN be as He lives in and through us. Aslan-like...lion-potential!


Brecky needs a dose of this and doggone it, so do I!

I'm being rebellious right now! (Don't tell my husband...opps, he will read this!) I can't afford this time to write, but I must...it is all welling up inside of me, threatening to burst. It must be Spring Fever! Spring is a tenuous thing here in Colorado, whispering its siren song for a few days, then shyly receding back into its cave when Old Man Winter asserts his authority once again. Another snow dump is in the forecast, but for this moment Spring is still summoning me.

I think my dogs feel it too. And rebellion is their response as well. They have all become knuckleheads who don't listen to me, wander off obliviously sniffing down a scent and are completely intoxicated with all the new life happening around them. Neither of us wants to be rebellious. It's not a choice to defy those we love, but rather our inner voice drowning out all sense of responsibility and awareness of the call from others. I must remember this as I bellow out their names to no avail and wonder what's gotten into them. Truth be told, it's gotten into me too!

But another factor in their abandon to Spring's call is the emerging fish...emerging from the frozen ice pond in our Adventure Land. Fish-pops just theirs for the taking! And believe me, they are taking them! First they roll in them to perfume their bodies with this scaly aphrodisiac, then they fight over who gets to carry the prized possession. God knows (literally, since He must have put this instinct in them!) why they want to smell like a dead, rotting fish, but they do. All of them...and even more so as they see others vying for aromatic advantage. And surprisingly, the females seem even more desperate in their rolling and squirming to get the maximum effect from their cosmetic efforts. (Sound familiar?!) I asked a dog afficiado why they do this and he said it masks their own natural scent with something their potential prey doesn't recognize as a predator. Hello, domesticated dogs, that's why we invented canned dog food...get the memo! It surely isn't a survival advantage being stinky in our pristine homes...just means an unwanted trip to the bathtub at the mercy of an owner who is anything but gentle in removing the revolting smell.

Perhaps the life lesson is that times change...and we need to change with them. What was advantageous at one point in our life might not be now. Perhaps new needs require new solutions. Perhaps just following the crowd to a stinky fish isn't the end all. Perhaps being true to the "scent" God wove in us is the best aroma we could ever conjure up. Perhaps we need to cut others (and ourselves) some slack as Spring Fever seduces us to knuckleheadedness. In all of this Spring-inspired wisdom, I must secretly confess I am deeply hurt that my animal magnetism can't compete with a smelly fish!

God and Dog

Hi y'all. No time for blogging right now...video projects due and my husband is barking at me to finish reading a manuscript he has written...need to capture my recent adventures including seeing 3 deer hit by a car at the same time and all rolling off the hood and roof fairly unscathed! For your entertainment and in the true spirit of this blog, visit this youtube link...SO TRUE! And turns out it is written, illustrated and sung by an old friend from college days. Kindred spirits!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H17edn_RZoY (If this link doesn't work just go to www.youtube.com and pick GodDog.)