Sermon of the Week:
You’re the Greatest!
An online sermon preached with The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on June 7, 2020.
The first of a four part sermon series: Do Unto Others–Being Good Neighbors in a Pandemic
Trinity Sunday
Keywords: Leviticus, The Greatest Commandment, Ryder the Superpup, The Good Samaritan, Loving your Neighbor. #pcusa
Permission to podcast / stream the music in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE with license #A-733469. All rights reserved.
Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-14, 33-37
and Luke 10: 25-37
A couple of weeks ago, I introduced all of you to our new pup Ryder.
He is a big goofball, a bundle of energy, all Australian Shepherd.
We have a lot of dog lovers out there, I know,
so to give you a bit of an update, he’s been great…
for the most part.
He is still under a year old, after all, and he acts like it.
He has a lot to learn, and so do we.
But he’s a sweet dog, most of the time, and so smart.
We’ve been working on some basic obedience training.
Brook has a clicker, and he does great on the basics:
sit, stay, down.
We can put him into a sit and then open the front door and he won’t go bolt,
that took us a few days.
He can go around Brook on command, and even go through her legs.
So Ryder is doing really well with all of that.
It’s that basic recall command, though, that is a bit of a challenge.
That’s underselling it, really.
He doesn’t want to come when called.
He’d much rather enjoy his sniffing around our back yard, thank you very much.
I mean, what do we really need him for?
It isn’t like we plan to have him round up some sheep or anything.
He knows he just want him to come inside and lay next to the couch.
That place he’s sniffing is so much more interesting.
So recall is what we’re needing to work on.
And it is more than just because we want him to come on command.
It is going to be particularly important when
we need him to be able to break his attention from something.
That’s a bit of challenge,
when his adrenaline system kicks in
and that inherent “I gotta go herd that thing” goes into overdrive.
There are some moments, when we’re out on our walk,
and he’s been so good,
and then all of a sudden
we walk by someone’s fenced in yard
and they’ve got their own dog out
and we see how quickly Ryder just shifts into full on bark mode.
Straining at his leash.
Impressive, but we need to figure out how to train him better in those moments.
We know that if we can get his attention before he locks in,
he does better.
Because we can get him to watch us,
or we can distract him from that squirrel, that dog,
and he does so much better.
But the interesting thing that I’ve found
is that Ryder, at least for now, can only focus on one thing at a time.
Ryder, and most dogs I’ve come to know,
have a one-track mind.
They focus on one thing.
Multitasking isn’t for them.
You get that delicious treat in front of them, and they’ll ignore that squirrel.
You get it in their mind that they might get a treat from you,
and you’re on your way.
Training is helping them keep their focus on what we need them to focus on,
on what we want them to do, rather than something else that’s on their mind.
At least, that’s what we’ve experienced so far.
It is hard to break his focus once he’s locked on.
///
Our vet calls this a question of impulse control,
and gave us tips on training a dog to ignore distractions…
which sounds like just what we need.
There are a bunch of ideas that we’ve found that we’re working on.
So, maybe I’ll give another update in a month or two and we’ll let you know how its going.
But I have been thinking a lot about Ryder this week,
every time we go on a walk, really,
about how he is all in, all the time.
This leaf that flitters past his nose: must be a treat!
That worm on the ground: must give it a smell.
It’s not just about the squirrels and the dogs we come across that we want to chase
and which has him drown out my efforts to get his attention.
For Ryder, and for many pups I’ve known,
it is almost like there are just two gears, on and off, this not that
good or not good. There’s no middle ground.
No complexity. No nuance.
And it had me thinking about how people, you and me, we’re so different.
Human beings live our life in the grey.
Things are complicated,
because it is almost never as simple as either/or, good or bad.
There are details to consider.
Background. Motives. Conditions on the ground.
This is part of what makes human beings unique, what makes us human,
the depth of thought we put into things.
It’s not that we don’t have our own impulses, our own way that we go all in
and have a hard time stepping back from all that.
Because we do.
I once found myself in an argument.
This was a few years ago. I didn’t start it.
Truth be told, I was minding my own business
and was just walking on a sidewalk outside of a grocery store.
By the time I realized what was going on,
that someone wanted to step up and challenge me,
by the time I realized what was going on
he was already going full steam ahead with it, you know,
pointing at me, barking a little bit, angry.
I was wearing this shirt I own
that says “No hate in the sunflower state”
the sunflower state being Kansas, where I live,
where our family has made their home.
And I guess this guy found that a provocative thing to read
outside of the Hen House,
and he wanted to give me a piece of his mind about it.
Truth be told, I think he was having one of those days,
I don’t know.
But that’s what I first thought, when this man got real close
face to face
a lot like Ryder can do at a fence when wanting to get after it with that neighbor dog. [Read more…]
