No, I’m not creating some sort of new age spiritualism combining Christianity and yoga. Meet my Yogi.

Yogi is the newest member of the pack at my house. He’s a 13 month old Alaskan Malamute that moved in with us two months ago.  Yogi is a rescue that I located through the Washington Malamute Rescue League (WAMAL).  I began working with WAMAL last summer with the idea of getting a new dog that Kenai could train.  I was planning to introduce you to Yogi earlier, but Kenai’s tribute took precedence.

Bringing Yogi into our home was a challenging experience.  My wife isn’t the biggest fan of Mals, after our experience with Kenai (he grew on her, and Yogi is too… but don’t say anything because she’ll deny it).  It took a lot of work to convince her that Kenai wasn’t the norm, and that I’d learned a lot from training him, that would help me integrate a new dog into the house with a lot less stress and drama. Then there were the rest of the members of the house:  in addition to Kenai, we had (still have) two geriatric cats, along with my daughter and son-in-law (who are living with us until they get a house bought here), and their two dogs–a Great Dane and an Italian Greyhound.  Both of these dogs are rescues as well, and come with their own… quirks.  It’s a rather full house, with a higher energy level than we are accustomed to, before you add a 90# puppy.

Yogi arrived just after New Year’s Day, and overall his integration has gone amazingly well.  Yogi is very different from Kenai personality-wise.  Where Kenai was a true Alpha, Yogi is more of a surfer-dude personality.  He’s not interested in being in charge of anything, and just wants to have fun.  I still need to convince him that chasing cats and excavating the backyard aren’t “fun,” but he’s learning.

Yogi, like all Mals, is super-smart.  Almost too smart.  Malamutes are a difficult breed for many people, which is probably why there are so many in rescue situations.  No one can resist the cute fuzzy puppy:

Awww, he’s so cuuuutteee…

But cuddly becomes less cute when he’s a little bigger, a lot stronger, and bored.  Mals need mental stimulation as well as physical.  If I don’t do something to keep Yogi’s brain busy solving a problem, he creates a problem.

Yogi is a great student-he learns what you teach him on the first try… but he makes you do it twice to determine if you really mean it.  He’s always thinking, always testing rules and boundaries.  It’s really entertaining, unless I’m in a hurry to do something, and he decides to test my boundaries… and patience.  But as I said, I learned a lot from Kenai, and it’s helped me understand Yogi much better.

As I said in the Kenai post, I’ve learned a lot about relating to people, and even about understanding God, from dogs.  The idea for this, and some future posts, is to share what I’m learning about God, from getting to know Yogi better.

The first lesson/observation I made–the one that gave me this idea in the first place–was shortly after Yogi came to live with us.  Yogi is VERY food-motivated.  A dog treat gets his undivided attention, and will cause him to obey just about any command you give.  That can be useful, but eventually you want him to obey commands without knowing there’s a treat involved.  This particular night, I really wanted to give him a treat for no reason… just because.  But I told him to sit.  I had the treat in my hand, but he didn’t know it.  That treat was the thing he wanted most…  And he thoroughly understood the command “sit.”  But part of training a dog is consistency.  You give the prompt once, and you don’t reward any other behavior.

I told Yogi to sit.

He wandered around my closet looking for things to sniff…

He looked under the bed for a cat to torment…

He tried to leave the room…

He knew what I wanted him to do… but he wasn’t going to do it.  He wanted things his way, not realizing that doing what I asked would get him what he wanted more than anything–more than smelly shoes, or hissing cats–a TREAT!!!!!

And I wanted to give it to him!!!  All he had to do was plop his butt down, and doggy nirvana was his.

I was beginning to get frustrated.  I had decided for no particular reason to give him something that would bring him sheer joy.  I wanted to give him a good thing, and his stubbornness was keeping it from happening.

And I laughed.  I wonder how many times God has had a good thing for me, something he wanted to give, something I wanted, but I was too stubborn, too independent, too selfish to realize that I was missing out on something my Good Father wanted me to have.

The Bible says God is “patient.”  The older translations use the word “long-suffering.”  I think that means he puts up with our annoying stubbornness much better than I do Yogi’s.  But how much better would things be if I did what I was asked, instead of doing what I wanted?