100 Days of Happy

Day 57 - High Hopes - May 5th 

Today's lesson comes straight from the dog, or puppy to be exact. If you have followed this blog, you have probably seen pictures of our cute (once little) puppy. Now at 8 months old she is almost full grown!  She has always been on the timid side, and having been bit as a young pup, had developed a few fear issues.  She was able to overcome a lot of those issues while staying with my daughter and her family. She found much solace spending happy time with her 'siblings' (My daughter's children!)  

One of the challenges we have really been trying to work on lately with Kimba, is to get her to jump up in the back of the Murano (our SUV).  It is something she has been deathly afraid of, and we have tried and tried to figure out a way to make her feel more secure. For awhile we were able to get her to put her feet up on the bumper, so we could at least lift her backside up to get her in. Then for some reason she decided she was afraid of that, so any time we went to lift her up, she would get down and run away.  It took weeks to get her to put her feet up again.  Then while visiting my daughter's house, her husband just told her to get in, and to our shock, she jumped in, no problem.  I had a lot of treats on hand so I just poured them out to reward her.  We tried it again, it worked! She jumped in again no problem, and again she was rewarded with a jack-pot of treats. Thrilled, I hurried home to show Robert what she could do..... but....... no matter what we tried she wasn't going there again, for any amount of treats.  We went a couple weeks without any success, in fact, most of the time we tried, she would just lay down and bark at us.  

We needed a new approach, so we put a box down that she could jump on, to get her closer to the back of the Murano.  It took awhile and many of the most tempting treats we could dream of, but she finally made the leap!(well, actually hop)  Over and over again we practiced this, until she could do it without any effort. We repeated this for a couple of days, then it was time to try it without the box. Whoa, the brakes came out again. We coaxed and encouraged with all our might using the best heated homemade gourmet treats we could think of ..... she just barked at us.  Now with all this barking, she had gotten the attention of the neighbor dog and he came to see what all the ruckus was about. When he smelt the goodies in the back of car, he knew exactly what to do,  and he hopped in the car. 
So here is the scene,  our Golden Retriever is barking at the back of the car and up comes the neighbor dog who is a little Boston Terrier, he hops in the back of the Murano with the greatest of ease and eats the best meal of his life! 

You might think this picture is looking pretty grim at this point but there is a redeeming feature here we hadn't planned on.  Kimba decided that the neighbor dog was not getting all her treats and hopped in to protect her interests.  Hooray, score again (finally!)
We must have practiced hopping in and out at least 25 times, she was leaping like a gazelle, which was probably hard with all the treats she was getting!  With a deep sigh of relief and feeling of great elation, we called it done for the evening.  

We practiced again the next day, beginning with the box and working our way back up to the full leap, all went perfect!  We had this in the bag!  To keep the routine going we practiced again today.
things were right on course as we started with the box and then removed it as we had previously done, when she jumped this time she didn't stick the landing as well as she had before but it was still safe. I still had lots of treats so we tried to keep the momentum going...............No such luck...... Defeat again...... After all we had been through, and here we were again........Me in the Murano, and Kimba laying on the cement barking at me.......Where is the neighbor dog when you need him?

Well I kind of pouted the rest of the evening, while I was pouting I did do a little reflecting on the whole situation.  I was quite disappointed, wondering why she would revert back so far, when she had this.  I also thought about me and my behaviors and shortcomings, and wondered how my Heavenly Father feels when I revert back to bad habits and fall short of my potential.  This put things much more in perspective.  I am so thankful that we have the chance to begin, again and again, no matter how many times it takes to get it right and keep it right, thanks to our Savior and His Atonement, His high hopes for us never diminishes.