I

don’t know if it’s all the work he’s done on himself all these years – this Spiritual Teacher I live with and love. (We met and fell in love in a spiritual community and they all stood witness when we tied the knot of our love in a loft at a mountain retreat.)

Perhaps it’s just his innate wisdom gained through years of living and the last 14 of living with and loving me. Maybe it’s associated with aging and what the shifting hormones do in a body – male or female.

But I watch this man continue to learn and grow and realize I sometimes need to run to catch up with him.

A year ago we got a 10-month old puppy from the Brother Wolf Animal Rescue in Asheville, NC. I chose her because she looked like a half-pint sized version of our beloved Labrador mix Buddy who’d left us in his old age a year-and-a-half previously.

When we took her home, we named her Daisy and believed her when she presented herself as a quiet and calm dog that needed a lot of sleep. But then the next day came and with it she turned into a bundle of energy that was almost too much dog for us.

We came to this relationship, as people do to any relationship, with baggage from previous ones (in this case, relationships with dogs). I came with fear that she would run away from home and he came with expectations of power struggles with her. Dogs can read minds and so she read ours and periodically gave us the pictures we had in our heads.

I spent a brief part of Thanksgiving morning 2011 chasing her up the side of a steep mountain onto a neighboring road, finally enlisting the help of college kids home for the holiday. They realized she was chasing their car and if they just stopped, I could reach her.

He’s spent many a walk struggling with her whenever a car passed or a dog came into view whose owner did not want the dogs to meet. Our differences in how to relate to her also set up power struggles between him and me that have had me periodically vowing all future dogs will be lap dog size and easier to control.

Along the way we got a dog trainer (aka a people trainer), watched a tape on dog training, and shared notes long distance with his daughter, who is also a dog trainer. These things helped us with some of my anxiety and some of his power struggles with Daisy who otherwise is easy to love and live with.

Then one day on a hike with his best friend, with both men taking their dogs along, my husband let his best friend take Daisy’s leash and something incredible happened. She didn’t pull. She trotted along side our friend and whenever she tried to get ahead of him, he’d say, “Hey!” and she’d drop right back beside him. He got to hike with our dog on a loose leash for about twenty minutes. Then Joseph took the leash and got the same behavior from our dog! She trotted on a loose leash beside him and every time she tried to get ahead of him, he made an “un-uh” sound and she’d drop back in line with him.

The two men got excited as our friend exclaimed, “She’s listening, Joseph! She’s listening!”

Joseph couldn’t wait to share the story with me and as we discussed what, how, and why it had happened, we realized with greater clarity that our expectations create our reality. She does listen and she listens by reading our minds. If I expect her to run away, she will. If he expects to have to power struggle with him, she’ll oblige.

The next day when it was just the two of us and her, he was solid and grounded in his new expectations of the pair of them and since then has consistently been able to walk her on a loose leash, get her to sit and stay when a car passes, and pay attention to him whenever he asks her to.

I love that. And I respect how he shared with me that he was able to take in his friend’s example and my suggestion about his expectations of a power struggle and turn his relationship with his dog around, over night, into a relationship free of struggle.

A learning curve presented itself like a wave on the ocean and, like a seasoned surfer, he mounted the wave and rode it to shore.

And I am in awe. When people present learning curves to me, I wish I was as masterful.