Welcome to Week 2 of The Bug and Me (alternatively The Rewiring of Thom or Everything I Need to Know About Life I’m Learning from My Dog).
One of my major impediments to becoming less cynical, angry and negative is a tendency to obsess over things I can’t control, rather than just let them go.
That actually may be a benefit in my professional life. It helps me to be accurate (most of the time) and grammatically correct (most of the time). In short, it makes me a better writer.
It also allows me sometimes to eventually expose important stories that might otherwise become buried.
To that end, yes, I am still working on the abrupt and suspicious “retirement” of Sacred Heart High School’s principle back in the fall. In fact, the allegations on that one are one of the worst kept secrets in Yorkton. We just can’t print anything (yet) because nobody has agreed to go on record and the new provincial regulatory board is moving at a pace such that if it slowed down any more it would be going backward.
The cynical me might suspect it was the government’s intent to become less accountable. A recent CBC report gave Saskatchewan an A for having a so-called “independent” body to investigate teacher misconduct, but a D for public accountability and an F for media cooperation.
While not letting go of things at work may be healthy, doing the same in my personal life over inconsequential things gives me unnecessary grief. Last week, it was a clerk at the Sasktel store who let a guy queue-jump while I was in the queue. I should have let it go.
Fortunately, I have a great role model for letting go. Obviously, I am talking about the Bug. Not literally speaking, of course. When she gets hold of something in her vice-like jaws, she hangs on to it like, well, let me see now… a dog with a bone.
That is largely my fault, I know. When she was a puppy, I basically taught her the keepaway game. Actually, teach, is probably not the right verb. She, being a Newfoundlander, has the natural tendency to latch on. They were bred to help fishermen with hauling nets and for rescue, so grabbing on and not letting go is an instinctual and useful trait.
What I did was reinforce the behaviour by playing keepaway (and tug-of-war) with her. She’s a dog, so reinforcing behaviour, desired or not, is really easy. In humans too, apparently, hence the cynical, angry, negative thing.
Anyway, the other day, she got hold of something I definitely did not want her to have. I looked over, saw she had something in her mouth and asked, “What have you got, Bug?”
That question apparently sounds like “Game on!” to her giant, floppy ears, because she immediately leapt up and scurried behind the dining room table, just daring me to try to get the thing away from her.
Then I saw what it was. Somehow, she had got hold of a bag of M&Ms. Don’t ask me how she managed it, but she is very resourceful especially when it comes to food. She is also about as tall as kitchen countertops, so very few places are safe from her probing, slobbery jowls.
I do not like getting mad at her (she’s just a dog), but in this case I really had no choice (chocolate is poison to dogs) and I screamed at her.
She dropped the bag and cowered in the corner, putting her tail between her legs (yeah, they actually do that).
She did not hold it against me, though. I scratched her head and it was over. She let it go, just like that.
It is getting easier for me, too. I expressed my displeasure to the clerk, but I remembered to observe the billowing anger and ask the simple question, “What’s the big deal?” and managed not to obsess over it.
It wasn’t a perfect reaction, but better.
It is amazing how fleeting emotions can be just by becoming aware of their ephemeral nature.
