Thursday, August 13, 2009

To train up a dog?!?...

As many of you who read this know, and from previous posts:
~We have a Golden Retriever Puppy.
~He will be one in October (and we are having him a party!).
~He was Noah's Christmas present.
~He is a mess.
~He runs, jumps, and tears up everything!

So, I have been trying to teach him to be calm. We haven't had him neutered, and may not, because he is pretty and might want to be a daddy one day....if he finds the right girl. Anyway, I have taught him to sit, and finally to shake. And now, I am in the process of trying to teach him to be calm while we walk on the leash. I have taken him several times on his leash. Mainly just down the road a bit, and back. But I'd love to take him to town to walk on the sidewalk, and little things like that. Right now though, he walks me, or runs me I should say. This morning we went from my house to the little sewer plant down the road. It's a pretty good ways there and back walking with a maniac dog, but I nevertheless made it. By the time we were coming home though, he did really good. Just walked straight rather than running all over the place. We have to stop when he smells something good. And when a car comes, we go over to the grass and sit and watch it pass. He did real good with this. I actually think he is afraid of cars. After having dogs all my life who chased cars, this is new to me!!!

All of this reminds me of training Noah on stuff. Obviously my dog is not a drop in the bucket when compared to Noah, but it's quite similar. When children are born into the world, they know pretty much nothing. My kid probably knew everything, but ya know! In truth, they know nothing. He had to be trained to do everything. Eat, play, crawl, sit up, walk, just to name a few. Now he's being trained to read and write. Training the dog is a fun thing. Training Noah is a serious one. I'm not going to just leave that to grandparents, sitters, and teachers. That's my job. Not only do I have to train him to function in the world, I have to train him up in the way of the Lord. HUGE responsibility. What if I mess up? If it's on the dog, that might be alright. If it's on Noah, I can't take it back. I have to make sure, starting October 22, 2004, that Noah knows right from wrong and real lessons of love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance. Those aren't individual fruits (although that is commonly misquoted Galatians 5:22-23), rather it says the FRUIT of the Spirit. That means all 9 traits go together to make up one fruit. Like an apple is made up of a core, seeds, the juicy fruit you eat, the peel, and the stem. An apple would not be an apple if you left on of those ingredients out. A Christian isn't effective either without all of those traits. In other words, you need all 9 in order to have the fruit. So, it's apparent that I would be responsible for showing my child ( along with the rest of the world) the love of Jesus. It's not always about rules, but about a relationship. I don't want to feel bound by the rules that man has made up and scared people away from a church with. Instead, I want them to know I am a Christian by my love!!!


In conclusion, hopefully I can teach Buddy Boy to be calm. To walk around like a big boy dog!!!


This is a picture of me, Noah, and Buddy Boy on the night we brought Buddy home!
And this is the beast now!!! Haha!!!


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