Dogs don’t know they’ve got them

I don’t know whether I’ve told you about success of my puppy dog Polly but, even if I have, let me bore you by repeating it.

You see as part of giving the brilliant Polly something to challenge her intellectually I’ve been taking her to advanced obedience classes for the last 24 weeks.

And the other day she graduated with flying colours.

That means she can now move onto ability and agility training which will give her a host of challenges and keep her from getting bored.

Because of her rollicking success we were invited to attend a briefing for that class which starts in February this coming year.

And that’s when I discovered something that rocked me… and would probably have rocked Polly too if only she knew it!

You see the instructor told me, “Dogs don’t know they have back legs!”

Now, you and I both know dogs do have back legs but the facts are they don’t really use them consciously as all they tend to use are their front legs which they know they have. If you like, their back legs just follow their front legs automatically.

So I discovered we have to teach them how to use them and, once they know how, they will be really valuable in their agility and ability activities.

And it made me think. I wonder how many people have back legs, or rather some other attribute, skill or ability they don’t know they have and therefore don’t use? Or maybe they know they have them but don’t know how to use them.

For instance, I don’t know how many people have told me they wish they were creative like me. Now, I don’t think I’m particularly creative, but I know that, in the course of my work, I have to be creative so I’ve just fired up whatever creativity cells lurk in me and become creative.

Many of my mates have said they would love to have run a sub-three hour marathon like me. Now, I didn’t know I was capable of running one, but I just oiled up the sub-three hour marathon cells in my body, worked on them and guess what? I ran a number of sub three hour marathons.

I guess what I’m trying to say is we all have within us the ability to do almost anything we want to do. We only have to want to do it enough. Sometimes, just like Polly and her back legs, we’ve got to be shown that we have them and then trained to develop and use them.

So, ask yourself: What back legs are you going to develop and use in the coming year?