This weekly column is inspired by students and news trends that remind us to “spill the tea” on what’s good. Shout out to Solutions Journalism, Fix the News, Good News Movement, and My Unsung Hero – check them out.
The goal is to practice seeing and spreading the good – looking for positive stories to balance out all the negative ones or finding a positive kernel in what seems like a bad or negative event. Building a practice of finding positivity is not about being naive or avoiding tough times – it’s about reminding ourselves that life can be hard, uncertain, and even unfair sometimes and resilience is fueled by hope and confidence built through action.
Recently, Bella Bear (my 12 year old, 140 pound Newfoundland dog) has been struggling to get up and not slip on our wood floors. Her joints are creaky and she is ever so slightly chunky. These are challenges I can’t do anything about. Well, I could put her on a diet but what would I do when she asks me for treats?
What I could do something about is try to help her get traction by trimming the hair around her paw pads. My daughter is the master at this, but I was too impatient to wait for her, so I tried to do it myself. Unfortunately, Bella jerked her paw right when I was snipping, and sure enough, I cut her. Bad. I lacerated the paw pad and blood went everywhere. Bella didn’t cry out. She just looked at me like “what the heck?”
I put myself in scissor timeout for at least five years. And for the next three weeks, I cleaned the wound and changed Bella’s bandage twice a day. She is completely healed now.
But what was most remarkable to me was how quickly Bella forgave me. Maybe forgiveness isn’t the right word because I don’t think she was ever angry at me in the first place. I was careless but she didn’t care. She continued to follow me everywhere and give me kisses any time I was in striking distance.
I have concluded that dogs are superior to humans, at least in their capacity to let go of hurt feelings. Instead of teaching dogs tricks like “sit”, “stay”, “shake”, perhaps we could learn tricks from them like “forgive”, “trust”, and “love”.
Inspired? Read more about these awesome dogs:
Roselle the hero dog of 9/11
Richochet, the SURFice dog
Also: Superpower Dogs.