go ahead...take that somersault

OK, warning...this blog post is going to be about our dog, Stella.  Yes, our dog.  It's also going to be about art and new ideas and life.  Bare with me while I share this story:

I DREAD clipping our dog's nails.  If they aren't clipped, they will grow on forever and eventually she looks like she is trying to manage wearing high heals backwards. Sounds cruel - wearing high heals backwards - and definitely not good in a chiropractic sense.  Stella is extremely well behaved and is also quite strong willed, ambitious and brave but...when it comes to nail clipping, she resists with all her might.  She whines and cries and it's just heart breaking to witness.

So, here's the deal.  There is a way to clip her nails that is more manageable for her and yet, after sixteen years, it's still difficult for me to agree to this process.  Also - as a side note - I have NO idea how many nails Stella has (I could count as she is sleeping at my feet right now and, don't worry,  I won't) but it seems like she has a million when I set out to clip.

So here's the process Stella takes.  After resisting and trembling and perhaps letting out some painful noise, she lets me clip ONE nail.  After this, she pounces around and literally does everything close to somersaults in praise of what she has done. Then she comes back for another clip and replays the ENTIRE routine.  You can see how nail clipping can turn into an hour long event - something that I really don't want to take the time to do.

This is how I want the scenario to play out:  I want us to bare down and get it ALL over with in ONE, full swoop, then we can do the prancing around and somersaults LATER.

But, ahhhh, what if (at the age of sixteen years), Stella STILL continues to teach me how to live? Maybe I've got it wrong.  Maybe instead of baring down and tackling an ENTIRE something or other (with the possibility of being too exhausted at the end to do a somersault), I need to take baby steps and each time, pat myself on the back for the step I've taken.  Yeah, this definitely slows the process down.  Yeah,  this approach forces me to live more in the moment.  Yeah, it's about living life as much as possible (even when there is resistance, even when we want to whine and cry and get it ALL over with).  When's the last time you did a somersault?  You deserve one (or the like) right now.  Go ahead, wherever you are on your journey, take one now...