I used to be a lot of things: politically conservative, impatient, intolerant, and demanding. I also used to be a shopaholic. To me, going to the mall or a shopping center was as necessary and important as breathing or eating. My husband hated doing errands with me because I would enter a man-centric store with him – like a hardware store – and never leave.
So going to a mall on a Saturday afternoon was not random at all. But on one particular Saturday in the fall of 1999, a trip to the mall changed my life.
I stopped in the pet store, which was near my usual entrance, just to look. I had a dog at home who had been adopted from the humane society and I certainly wasn’t in the market for another. But I loved to look. Did I say I was just looking?
Inside of one of those cages was a Border Collie puppy.
Maybe it was because my daughters and I had really enjoyed the recent movie Babe (which features BCs, as they are called), but the sight of that puppy excited me like no other dog ever had.
I called my youngest daughter and said, “Guess what? There’s a Border Collie puppy at the pet store!”
She asked if I was going to buy it, and I said, “Of course not.” And then I left the store and went about my shopping.
But for one entire week I thought about that dog. Constantly.
By the following Saturday I couldn’t stand it any longer, and returned to the pet store with my two teenage daughters. I bought the dog (my husband was out of town, thank goodness) and took him home.
And he changed my life.
You have to understand a little about the BC to understand why. BCs are considered the smartest dogs in the world. Consequently, they need special attention. Th
ey need to be trained, encouraged, and engaged if they are going to be successful pets. (Yes, just like employees.) So I set out finding a job for my highly intelligent, driven boy.
What I found is flyball. And within flyball, I found a totally new world. It’s a dog-centric world, where the care and compassion for animals is overwhelming. It is a world where people cooperate and encourage each other – at least most of the time – in order to give their pets, and themselves, something special and rewarding.
Author Jon Katz writes about the “lifetime dog.” By his definition, a lifetime dog is a dog that touches your heart in a way no other animal can or does, often at a critical time or juncture.
Ike, as he was named, became a lifetime dog to me. I got him as my children were becoming adults and entering their own world. I was also at a professional crossroads, having left the practice of law and wondering what else I was suited for. Ike then took me into the world of flyball, where I learned so much about dogs and animals – their need for care, compassion, tolerance, and their love of play, affection, and attention.
And that laundry list of me that started this post? Ike, and his ultimate love of flyball, changed all of those things for the better. The professional crossroads? That’s when I went into HR.
Thanks to a random encounter of the most wonderful kind.
About the author: Joan Ginsberg, JD, SPHR, is an HR and Social Media consultant. Her general blog is Just Joan and her blog for the over 50 crowd resides over here.
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