She's a hot mess of problems. She was abandoned by her mom by a lake in Texas, the people we adopted her from in Grand Rapids could barely be considered an organization where she lived in a cigarette-smoke-filled double-wide with 6 other dogs, some turtles and who knows what else, and three days before we adopted her she apparently had hernia surgery, which the rescue facility did not find warranted even a sentence in the email correspondence we had. Suffice it to say, the poor dog has had a rough go of it. She pooped all over me twice on the ride home from Grand Rapids, threw up, and decided she would take up residence in the boys' bathroom once we got home, as that was the least scary room in the house?
Lucy is truly a great dog (great in the way that- have you ever had a dog? You love 'em and scratch their bellies and then why are they puking in the house and what did they roll in and can they ever just stop barking at whatever that God-forsaken noise is), she takes so much of the boys' abuse; my youngest is constantly grabbing her face and scratching her chin (is that even a thing dogs like?), and my oldest is obsessed with her. She has definitely gotten me out of my shell, since now I have a RESPONSIBILITY. I take her on several walks a day, and this means I have now met my neighbors (I do realize I have lived here for 3 years and don't know my neighbors- I am not a neighbor-type person. I want to go home and sit in my house. Working retail all your life will do this.).
Today I was taking Lucy for a walk around the neighborhood, the extended version that's maybe 1.5 miles. A side effect of her upbringing is that she is a nervous dog- she hates tarps, meeting new people makes her pee everywhere, and if something scared her at a spot, she will avoid that spot perhaps forever. Sometimes I get fed up with her scaredy cat antics, and today was one of those days. We pass a house that has all those little flags in the yard so as to prevent you from digging into an electrical cable or a gas line, etc. Lucy starts pulling away. I'm saying to myself, "Self, let's make this a TEACHABLE MOMENT. We will HELP this poor dog." So I pull her over to these yellow flags and start touching them and batting at them. "It's just a flag, it won't hurt you," I repeat as I try to pull her closer. She is not having it, absolutely refusing to come any closer, despite my sweet voice and attempts at behavior modification. I keep yanking at her, and she is not graciously accepting my help, so I storm back to the house, muttering about what a dumb dog she is.
And folks, this is when I realize something- Lucy has been electric-fence-trained by white flags at our house. She had to learn quickly that stepping past white flags meant a zap on the collar. She wasn't naturally apprehensive of white flags, but we trained her to stay away from white flags. Now the neighbor's flags were yellow, but come on she's a color blind dog. And I'm a moron.
I was struck- how often in life do we feel like we know better, know more, can help someone else out by our wisdom, experience, eagerness to help, when we don't realize what their flags are and what they mean to them? I know very well those yellow flags aren't going to zap my dog, but she doesn't. We know we aren't going to cheat on, steal from, abuse, manipulate, lie to our friends, our partners, but maybe they don't see it the same way. They see glaring white flags, warning them of danger.
Sometimes we need to take a step back from pushing, from assuming we have all the facts, of anger that someone isn't changing, progressing quickly enough, and come to realize that we aren't all knowing and all seeing. We also have our flags. Perhaps we need to extend a little kindness, for we don't know just what flags others are learning to cope with.
