Persistency Pays

Bella and I have been walk­ing now for a cou­ple of weeks and I love it. So does Bella. Faith­fully Bella wakes me up at 6:00 a.m. for our morn­ing jaunt and we end our day the same way. Last night, how­ever, I was exhausted. Although I didn’t come right out and say, “Bella, it’s not gonna hap­pen tonight”, she was quick to pick up on what was hap­pen­ing … or, in this case, not happening.

The minute I turned off the lights and headed for the stairs Bella ran and stood in front of me. I climbed one more step and she fol­lowed, stand­ing in front of me and mak­ing me climb over her to con­tinue my ascent. The fur­ther up the stairs, the more aggres­sive she became. She started, play­fully, bit­ing at my feet, telling me I had for­got­ten an impor­tant part of our evening rou­tine. When I reached the top of the stairs she started run­ning at top speed through­out the upstairs, jump­ing on beds, jump­ing off beds, dart­ing around cor­ners in an effort to say, “Hey Dad, remem­ber, we’re sup­posed to be out walking.”

As mas­ter of the house I will tell you that I told Bella that she would have to wait until morn­ing; that her evening walk had been can­celled. But that is a lie. Bella’s per­sis­tency paid off. We took our walk.