Moving along

When dog training goes well, it really gives you a lift.
I started this morning in a stressed-out, discouraged mood, frankly bordering on angry, for non-dog reasons.
Met Nina and Europe at Maine Med, and Murphy performed like a guide dog, behaving beautifully. Nina couldn't get over how much more mature he seems, even in the span of a couple weeks. 1 was a magic number for him, apparently.
As I drove home, suddenly everything, even the other stuff, seemed so much more manageable again.
When I got Murphy in November, I don't think I had much of an idea of some of the things that this year would throw at me. (Of course, you never do with life, do you?)
Murphy turned out to be a harder task than I ever expected, and brought me more self-doubt than I anticipated. That's true on other fronts. But things here have been hard in a different way than South Carolina, which was hard in the "if it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger" sense of hard. I would say this past year has been a theme of moving on through disappointments, setbacks and doubt.
In South Carolina, I came to the conclusion that sometimes -- and I mean the work situation there -- the best choice in life is to throw up your hands, say screw it, this isn't working, and cut and run.
Here, it's been a year where cut and run wasn't an option on any front, really.
But Murphy is giving me hope that at least on his front, there's a reward for staying the course.