Who's training whom?

There are days when you have so many routine things to do that you wonder if you can actually go about the day's business.

One of the things that I am, in the middle of doing is training Alto (he is a great dog) but he is a puppy, and a beagle. Which means jumping up, catching rabbits, and finding drugs!!!

The slow process of training him to sit, and to walk properly seems to be going OK....he is very responsive...but in a way too smart for me.

Just when you think everything is going well he seems to take control and invent some new game to play.

Each feeding time is extended because I need to make him..sit and stay.. and he seems to have got it today.

But as my erstwhile colleague once noted, when she told me why she had rejected puppy school, you wonder who is being trained. There is no doubt about it the owner needs just as much (if not more) training than the pet.

I cling to the belief that I must have within me the capacity in this life to train one dog...or at least to be trained to train!

But not forgotten

Enough is enough, no more people I know are allowed to die for at least 6 weeks (or until I come back from my holidays on 27th January!)
Having bemoaned that I sat around waiting for the third person to die, the 4th, 5th and then 6th died before Chrismas.
This latter my first priestly boss (or "Rector" as we used to call him!) was a curious mix of the person who longed to be different but couldn't bring himself to be free of his conservative shackles. He was enormously gifted and perceptive, when he preached well he was remarkably good and helpful. But he was also deeply threatened, not I think by other people's competence, but by any sense of loss of power. He thus threw away countless opportunities to soar because he was frightened that if he flew tooo high he would not be able to crap on people below.
Perhaps a little harsh! But as one who was his subordinate I (and others) could have done without it.
I found myself asking my wife a couple of weeks ago what I would have been like if instead of being discouraged I had been enouraged by him. Then a few days later he died.
I have only myself to blame for allowing him to affect me the way he did, and there were other issues going on at the time.
As death unremittingly reminds us of what we ought to do and what we ought not to have done, I tried when I was a training Rector to treat my curates better than I had been treated.
With one I was too liberal, but he was moderately competent any way. The next was good, because he would have been good where ever he was, but I think I helped him a little. The next just totally exploited my desire to not be like my first Rector and did what he liked....he is now in a position of prominence and doing that to lots of others too....and by the time I had the last one I became bored with the whole exercise and he just did nothing other than play golf, and I just couldn't raise the energy to smack him over the ear.
So? My reflection? Don't go criticising the now defunct AJD, I did no better myself. I hope that he has the rest and stability in eternity that he could not bear to have on earth, and yet so desperately longed for