Winnie, or, What Kind of Leader Are You?
We adopted a dog back in February. Her name is Winnie, short for Winnipeg, which is where she was rescued. In her two short years, she had at least one litter of puppies, was flown on a plane, had a kidney removed, was spayed, and was treated for multiples types of parasites (some of which destroyed her kidney). We understand that when she was found, she had been tied up with a rope around her neck and left outside. That's all we know.
And here's something else we know: she never complains. She will play fight with us and pretend to bark and play aggressive (her tail wagging the whole time), but in terms of her needs, she is silent. So, for example, sometimes I lose track of time in the morning and don't take her out for her morning pee until much later than normal. She doesn't make a peep. She waits patiently.
Sunday
Which leads me to Sunday night.
Sometimes Winnie sleeps for a while on our bed, sometimes on the couch downstairs, sometimes on her bed in our room, sometimes in the hall... you get the picture. Sunday night, she could not settle. She was up and down on our bed for several hours. She wanted to look out the window. I would drift off to sleep only to awaken to hot breath and panting as she stood at the side of the bed with her face right by mine.
My husband and I were perplexed - she seemed fine! I got up to use the washroom and she started going down the stairs, looking up at me, expecting me to follow. No whining, no complaining, no barking, tail still wagging, etc.
Finally, around 3am, after being woken up about 28 times, I decided to take her out. (We don't have a fence, so we have to take her outside on a leash.) She ended up having quite a lot of diarrhea. But as she was taking care of her business, I looked up and saw the newly waning full moon, and two bright planets (Jupiter and Saturn, I believe.) The moonlight cast a beautiful blanket onto the grass as the fireflies flickered. And I thought, at the time, that this was the reason I’d been lead outside by the dog. To experience this beauty.
The Turtle is home.
Oh. I've forgotten to tell you something. If you'll recall my newsletter and blog post from last week, we managed to help an injured turtle and took her to Sandy Pines Wildlife Centre to rehabilitate. We’d volunteered to return her when she was better, and on Saturday we got the call that she was ready to go home. Here's some footage of that. Thankfully getting her back to her home was not as fraught with challenge as the week before.
So, the moon was exquisite, and it was so exciting to see the two planets. Less exciting was the diarrhea and also the baby skunk who happened to just walk right up to us in the backyard. Yikes!
I assumed that, like last week, if I hadn't taken the dog outside, I wouldn't have been able to see that beautiful moon and planets. But.
After ruminating about the experience, I’ve come to realize that the lesson here is deeper than that. Much deeper. And involves exploring some shadow work of mine.
Why?
The lesson here is this: why did I wait so long to take her outside? This had gone on for hours. I know that she doesn't complain - this isn't the first time she's been restless at night due to her stomach. I kept rationalizing that she would surely cry or whine or bark if she was desperate to go out. She would surely tell us in a more aggressive way that something was going on.
The lesson is this: she’s under my care, and I was waiting for her to complain before taking her outside (something I just didn't want to do at 3am after not sleeping for several hours.) I let my brain come up with an excuse to avoid doing something irritating, even though all of the information I had about her told me that she WAS in fact letting me know she needed to go out.
I took advantage of her good nature to avoid doing something unpleasant.
As leaders, this is what we need to grasp. We shouldn't wait for people to complain in order to do the right thing. We shouldn't assume that they are comfortable or even confident enough to complain. To take this a step further, if I'm punching you in the stomach, I don't need you to cry or tell me to stop to know that I shouldn't be doing that. We shouldn't be pushing people to their limits. We shouldn't push until somebody says no, if pushing is the wrong thing to do. This goes for all of our roles as leaders - how we manage offices, how we parent our children.
We need to be confident enough to foresee problems, and avoid them. We need to use our intuition to assess how situations are actually going. We need to do the right thing, even when it’s annoying, or hard or we’re tired. We should not take advantage of peoples’ good nature. Ever.
So. What kind of leader are you? Let me know in the comments below!
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