One of our dogs, Snips, is a border collie-corgi mix, or a borgi, and she is an exuberant soul. When she wags her stumpy tail, her entire body wiggles. She knows she is not supposed to jump up on people but sometimes cannot contain herself. She is eager to assist in any activity at any time — I work from home, and if I get up to get a drink of water, she usually hops up from her pad and follows me into the kitchen to see if she can be involved. She loves our older dog, loves our cat, loves my husband, loves my son, loves me.
But she probably loves playing fetch more than anything. Every morning, one of us throws the ball for her for about fifteen minutes, and we repeat the routine each evening before dinner. She is always eager to get started, staring from us to the back door until we put on our coats and go outside.
Once we get out the ball, she becomes so immersed she ignores everything else, even our neighbors’ dogs coming to the fence to say “hello.” She is built for this game, too. Though she is long-bodied and short-legged, she is muscular and athletic and boasts quick bursts of speed of which her quarter horse friends would be envious. She often catches the ball mid stride or with spectacular air-borne leaps.
Maybe saying that she “loves” fetch isn’t quite right. A friend of mine once described working dogs like border collies, Australian shepherds, and blue heelers as “dogs that need a job.” Snips definitely fits this bill, and since we live in town and don’t have a herd of cattle in our backyard, we started playing fetch with her as a way to fill the gap.
Watching her, I’ve begun to wonder if it is more than a job. One might use the term “obsession.” Even after an eight-hour-day of hiking during backpacking trips, she’s game — she hunts up sticks and tosses them at as us the minute we take of her pack and continues to do so until we acquiesce. She only really rests after it gets too dark to play, and then only if she has gotten in a solid fetch-session.
Fetch is the thing that fulfills her like nothing else. Though I risk anthropomorphizing her (more than I already have) by doing so, I think of it as her calling. Would it be if she had the opportunity to work cattle as she’s bred to do? I’m not sure. But I believe dogs know love and joy, and I believe I see it in her face every time she plops down, panting and grinning, after playing fetch.
I’ve been meditating on passions and callings and jobs of late as I continue to reestablish and reimagine routines that were disrupted when my father died and then during the holidays. I’ve been thinking about how I actually spend my time and how I want to spend it. I am learning from watching Snips play fetch. I wouldn’t enjoy running wind-sprints after a ball in the backyard (though, man, I’d be in great shape if I did), nor would I be fulfilled by doing so. But I am realizing that I am lucky that, like Snips, I know what my calling is.
I think each of us has something like this, something that draws us. We can’t borrow it from someone else but must find it for ourselves. Even once we do, we then have to insist, as Snips does by trotting to the door every day, that we get to do it regularly.
This is where I fall short too often — I feel the pull to write, the need to, and I know that if I do, I will feel the same satisfaction Snips does after fetch. But it is easy to think I don’t have time. Unlike my dog, I tell myself, I have to deal with “real life.” She doesn’t have to answer emails, run errands, or file taxes.
Then I remind myself that Snips only asks for one or two fifteen minute sessions of fetch each day, that fifteen minutes is enough. That, like Snips with a ball, once I get started writing, I don’t want to stop.
