Puppy Matters

I recently had my niece and nephew over for the weekend as my brother and his wife were going away. Because no one would be at their home I also had their two beagle puppies in tow.

I loved having the children, an excuse to play games, do crafts and watch kids’ movies. However, the dogs were a handful for my normally adult home. Although their training was going well where they lived the excitement of my home, the grumpiness of my older dog and the new smells seemed to have an affect on their ability to “hold it.” Soon every mat in our home had a wet spot, and we were getting frustrated. 

Later in the weekend my daughter complained to me about the situation and said, “All the mats in this house have pee puddles.”  And my niece, who overheard responded with, “Why do you have so many mats?” 

I love it. The problem as my little niece heard it wasn’t overactive puppy bladders but the fact that we have too many mats. Fewer mats would be wet if we had fewer mats. This is sound logic, really. 

I think we all do this sometimes; we know we have a problem or that something isn’t working, and we leap to what we can see, or what we interpret through our view or the first thing that presents itself. It takes a degree of patience, of asking more questions, of looking at all the angles and we might still get the first solution wrong. Am I open to the idea that, unrelated to the puppy situation, maybe I do have too many mats? A lot of tools are available to make sure we are asking great questions, and looking more deeply, and at the end of all that the messes of our entire problem will hopefully be lessened.

Photo by Kampus Production on Pexels.com