Bo Learns About Life’s Expectations
Today, I present a true dog story, complete with instructive moral.
Actually, a three-pack of instructive morals. This story has at least three different lessons, and you can choose whichever one you prefer. All are guaranteed to change your life, inspire you to greater glory, spur you on to financial independence, etc.
Here’s the story:
Bo, our big goofus of a dog, has only one dream in life. He wants to catch a squirrel in our back yard.
Normally, this 80-pound fuzzball, half golden retriever and half malamute, is content to saunter through life in a dignified trot. But whenever he sees a squirrel out on the grass, nibbling some little squirrel goodies, the following thought flashes through every quadrant of Bo’s canine brain: Hey! Prey!
He rockets toward that squirrel like some kind of cartoon dog. You can almost hear the screeching tires.
He doesn’t actually know much about squirrels, or their little squirrel habits, or their little squirrel right to live in peace on our planet. All he knows is that squirrels perfectly fit all the requirements of prey, being furry and tasty-looking and small enough to take down in one fall.
However, squirrels have two traits that prevent them from actually becoming prey. They are fast, and they climb trees.
Which means that Bo rips through the yard like some kind of runaway Clydesdale, but by the time he gets to the last known squirrel location, the squirrel is already up a tree, laughing and pointing.
You’d laugh too, because typically Bo can’t get the brakes on soon enough. Usually he goes skidding into the fence.
Bo has repeated this entire sequence at least once a day for six years. On particularly squirrel-rich spring days, he has repeated it 10 or 12 times.
Never, not once, has he come within 10 feet of an actual squirrel, except when he is napping in front of the fire, dreaming.
Yet he has remained unfazed, even after crashing into the fence or sliding splay-legged into the peonies. He always jumps to his feet and takes up an excited vigil under the tree. He prances around, head up, eyes locked on his prey, mouth open in anticipation, waiting for that squirrel to make a false move.
Which, of course, the squirrel never does.
Until one day …
Bo tore after a marauding little gang-squirrel, who nonchalantly strolled up the tree-trunk before Bo was even halfway across the yard. The squirrel took up post on a branch, and Bo took up his bright-eyed vigil underneath.
I have no explanation for what happened next. I suspect that the squirrel got to laughing too hard or got carried away while doing a sack-dance. Yet what I am about to say is absolutely true, witnessed by my very own wife:
The squirrel fell out of the tree and landed directly in the dog’s open mouth.
All of Bo’s most precious dreams came true in that one instant. He had yearned for it, longed for it, fought for it, and there, in that moment, it was in his very jaws.
And here’s what he did next. He spit that squirrel out. It raced to the tree and got away. Two seconds later, there was nothing to be seen but one surprised-looking dog.
And that’s today’s story. Bo is not giving interviews, so I’m not sure what lesson he took away from this incident. I, however, have meditated over it, and I have come up with three maxims to ponder.
Be careful what you wish for - you might get it and want to spit it out. Maybe Bo realized, after years of mouth-watering fantasy, that squirrels don’t taste so good.
What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. That’s how Thomas Paine put it. If Bo had snatched that squirrel in a fair and strenuous chase, he might have relished it. But to have it fall out of the sky? Where’s the satisfaction?
With enough patience, perseverance and faith, something wonderful will fall right into your mouth. Just remember to bite down.
Personally, that’s the lesson I prefer to take to heart. And so, I think, does Bo. It would explain why he now stares up into that tree more than ever, mouth open.
, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jim Kershner The Spokesman-Review