Learning to try and regard things before reacting

Joe decides for no apparent reason to launch himself away from me as I walk him, as the lease is only 10 feet long, there's not anywhere he can really go, so he hangs himself up in the air before spinning back my way. And then he spins and pulls, grabbing the leash in his mouth.

It's both hilarious and frustratingly annoying in equal measure. Today though as I watched him twirling about manically, the whites in his eyes visible setting off the intensity of emotion he was feeling, I realized that this was puppy frustration. He doesn't want to mosey along all the time, some of the time he wants to claw the turf, gallop ragged through leaf piles, and be chased pell mell. He wants to go to the dog park, although he doesn't know what one is yet. For a puppy, no one's more fun than another puppy - and by those lights I guess I can be more understanding of these moments of demonic possession.

He'll get his last round of puppy shots next week, and then we're off to the dog park.

More importantly, though, it made me realize that if I step back from my idea of what a dog walk should look like, and really see what is happening for him as much as for me, the answer is obvious. Being annoyed when he goes briefly crazy may be difficult to avoid as my shoulder gets yanked hither and thither, but I think I've learned something important about being a dog owner from this last experience.

And perhaps in unrelated news, I woke up thinking that everything in my life is fixed only by my attitude to it, shift the attitude and everything else has to shift too. I suppose there are any number of spiritual self-help books that point that out, but to me it was a new realization. And for a moment, I felt a sudden shift, a lifting, a bearable lightness of being.