Play to Your Strengths

“You have one more minute to play before we have to go home.”  “5-4-3-2-1, let’s go.

If you were to hear those sentences, you would probably infer that I was talking to a child.  Strangely enough, you would be wrong. My children are teenagers;  I have not spoken to them like this in many, many years.

I was talking to my dog, Rory.

My husband and I are educators.  I swear being a teacher runs in your blood, and you can’t turn it off, especially if you were an elementary school teacher. From time to time I automatically switch to teacher voice and teacher things come out of my mouth without thinking. 

Rory is not the best walker in the world.  She loves to sniff around.  Maybe she has some hound in her, I don’t know.  But there are long stretches of our walks when her nose is a centimeter off the ground.  (I am always so fascinated.  What information can she get from her sniffing?)  And a leaf pile?  Forget it!  She could stay there all day - the smells it must have.

So...we know she needs time to smell, but we need her to walk.  So we started early on saying, “5..4..3..2..1..let’s go!”  About 70% of the time she moves on.  It is quite miraculous.  The other 30% of the time we have to tap her side and repeat, “Let’s go!” before she moves on.  

To us, this is totally normal.  But the looks we get?  “She responds to counting down?”  Yes.  We have been doing it with her since we adopted her, and she now knows what we mean.  Well, she knows that “1” means we are moving on.  She doesn’t always listen, but she knows what we mean.   As educators, we thought this was a natural signal to move on.  (The one minute warning?  That means nothing to Rory.  She is usually in the throes of rolling on the ground with another dog when that is said.)

We get looks, but it works.  We will take it.  

Lesson learned: Play to your strengths.