Tweet

What I Learned From Sam The Border Collie Dog

Written by: Andrew Rondeau

Article Overview: Sam was a very intelligent, smart and active dog. He was a real live wire! Here is Sam’s last year in his words. What can you learn?

What I Learned From Sam The Border Collie Dog

Hi, I’m Sam, I am 12 now, and you know what the best thing in life is? Playing with my ball. I just love it – fetching, catching, dropping – I just don’t know when to stop. Oh sometimes I can’t move the next day due to my aching muscles.

I love learning new tricks – I can tell the difference between different coloured balls, I can play dead, I can go to the toilet when I hear a particular command. I must know the meaning of at least 50 commands.

And I love people. I love people more than I do other dogs. When we go to the park I’m not interested in the other dogs – I like cuddles from the dog owners. It makes their dogs jealous.

I Became Unwell Very Quickly

Just over a year ago, I began to feel rather unwell and subdued. I was also drinking loads and a few nights I wet my bed! So my owners did the normal thing and took me to the vets. I was poked and prodded but I didn’t mind, I just laid there. In fact, it was quite nice really, I smelt lots of new smells!

My parents faces looked really worried so I thought it must be serious. I was diagnosed as being diabetic. Didn’t know what that meant so trotted off home.

That night I didn’t get my bedtime treat. I thought that was a bit strange.

Next morning, I had some new strange food – it was nice so I ate it all up. Then my dad stuck a needle in me and I felt this really cold liquid inside me.

What were they doing to me – I thought I’d be a good boy and get a treat! I didn’t although I did get a big cuddle – that was nice.

I Got Used To New Habits

This started to become a habit – strange food twice a day quickly followed by a needle in the neck and a cold feeling inside.

And I missed all the treats in-between meals.

After a couple of months, I noticed my eyes were not as good as they were. I could only see things when they were really close. Often my dad would throw the ball for me to catch and I would miss it – it would hit me on the nose. I used to be the best catcher in my town!

I Could Not See

Then I woke up one day and it was just black – I couldn’t see a thing. That was scary. I just bumped into things, so I was off to a new vet. A special eye vet. It was miles and miles away – a long car journey.

We went to this new vet many times, I just got in the car and fell asleep – it was nice.

One time I was there, I had a really deep sleep, woke up and could see! I saw my mum and dad again. I could catch the ball, I could see what I was eating – not that it had changed in any way but it was nice to see if I had eaten it all.

So not only did I have needles poked in me twice a day, I had drops put in my eyes 6 times a day. But look, I could see and play and everything!

One thing I did notice though was that I was always hungry. I would look for food around the house – check the bins, look in the bedrooms, just for any crumbs of food.

What A Mistake I Made!

One day I found a tennis ball. Now I love tennis balls – I was hungry, so I ate it. That made me really, really ill. Back to the vets we went. They didn’t know I had eaten a tennis ball, they just knew I was not very well. They couldn’t find anything wrong – so they shaved off all my hair on my belly and chest and some of my sides. I looked stupid. They then put this really cold thing on me that looked inside me and they kept me in the vets overnight. That was lonely.

Eventually the tennis ball passed through me and I was then fine.

Then you never guess what happened next. My left eye began to really hurt and back to the eye vets we went. It was really painful, that left eye, but I didn’t know how to tell them. Luckily, they took it out, but I can still see with my right eye.

But It Is Not That Bad...

So I have had a rather eventful year but that’s life isn’t it. You just deal with these things and get on with it. I’m still loved, get loads of cuddles, fed, played with, lots of sleep. It’s great!

This is what I have heard my owners say about me:

Sam has had to deal with a lot of change in the last year.

He has never moaned, never complained, never refused, never run away from the injections. All the vets comment they have never seen a dog so happy no matter how unwell he is!

When Sam was with us, if you gave him his ball, he was still a puppy at heart.

We learned so much from him - over and above staying calm in a crisis - accept change: it happens to you; sometimes you can’t do much about it - but just carry on, life is all about having fun and that is exactly what Sam did no matter what he had to go through.

What Can you learn from Sam the Border Collie?

Related Articles
  Ten Things You Can Do To Read People Quicker
  How the Right Information Can Mean Increased Profits
  Start A Home-Based Business Successfully With Your Spouse
  One Tough Thing You Need To Do Today
  The gatekeeper, screener or receptionist is an ally

Article Tags: aching muscles, bedtime, cold feeling, coloured balls, cuddle, cuddles, dad, dog owners, dogs, faces, good boy, habit, next morning, parents, strange food, toilet, vets



Related Forum Posts
Re: What Do Women Entrepreneurs Want? - [quote="Tami Szabo":1ya8y88l]Shri, I really appreciate what you said. When we place the blame elsewhere, we give our power away. However, when we look at ourselves and our our ability to create the lives and businesses that we want, we empower ourselves. Kevin asked what I'd like to see with this forum and I think you and I are on the same page. I want to see this as a community of intelligent women where we inspire each other to think bigger and open up to the great possibilities for ourselves and our businesses. I truly believe each one of us women has great talent and potential. When we stop comparing ourselves with others and simply focus on succeeding at being the amazing women we already are, we give ourselves permission to grow forward in incredible ways. Fear takes a back seat because it's not about impressing others, but simply expressing who we already are. Since we're all great women, we have nothing to prove. I desire to see this forum as a safe place to share our plans and invite the best of each other forward. Let's set a precedence of not measuring our value against other women or men. We are not a threat to each other! Imagine the powerful force we will be if we learn to come together and keep inviting each one to reveal her great talents. With much warmth and sincerity, Tami[/quote:1ya8y88l] I like Shri's comments as well because people who complain a lot only make themselves look bad rather than their subject matter. And Tami, when you said that you have a "desire to see this forum as a safe place to share our plans and invite the best of each other forward" it reminded me of the book "Don't Think Pink" by Lisa Johnson & Andrea Learned. In that book, the authors share your sentiments by saying "Hosting a forum through which your women customers can share their stories with one another...women will remember the brand that helped them find a solution-oriented community, and they will remain loyal and very likely spread the word about it to their friends” ("Don't Think Pink" 73).
Meet Mary Sue Milliken - chef and restaurant owner - Mary Sue Milliken will be at our "Launching an Edible Life" event February 4 in Los Angeles ... come join us! Contact aswift@ladieswholaunch.com for registration details. If there's just one thing you need to open a restaurant, it would have to be a stove, right? Think again. When Mary Sue Milliken and her best friend/fellow chef/business partner Susan Feniger opened City Cafe in Los Angeles in 1981, they had no stove or oven, only a hot plate and a hibachi out back in the alley. Humble digs, especially for two professionally trained chefs-Milliken had attended Washburne Culinary Institute, while Feniger studied at the Culinary Institute of America. Their resumes included stints at three-star restaurants in France, Spago in Los Angeles, and Le Perroquet in Chicago, where they met in 1978-the first women working in that restaurant's all-male kitchen. Rich in experience and vision, but not in funds, they were happy to have a restaurant to call their own and quickly began perfecting a unique, multicultural fare, which incorporated recipes from Greek, Indian, and Thai cultures, as well as their own mothers' recipes. Once they expanded to City Restaurant in 1985, they became culinary icons, recognized for their fresh mix of refined culinary technique and exotic Third World flavors, all dished up with down-home charm and playful enthusiasm. Now overseeing 375 employees between the Border Grill restaurants in Santa Monica and Las Vegas and Ciudad in downtown Los Angeles, the partners have also found time to write five cookbooks, including the recent Mexican Cooking Essentials for Dummies; host the popular Food Network shows "Too Hot Tamales" and "Tamales World Tour"; and launch the Border Girls brand at Whole Foods Market. What we learned from Mary Sue: Not every venture will be successful, but every experience will be worthwhile. "You've got to bounce back and just keep going. They're all great lessons to learn." Words of Wisdom "I think we both subconsciously were willing to start in a really meager setting, just because it was an opportunity not to work for a man." Penniless But Passionate "We had come home [from France] with the intent to open a restaurant together, and we didn't have a penny to our names. I was 23 years old. I had not been to college. I had no idea how to launch a business. None. Susan had a degree in economics and had been to chef's school. She's five years older than me. But she also didn't have any idea how to launch a business." Cook What You Know "First of all, you just copy things. But then, it starts to be a very personal cuisine, which is what we basically used those three-and-half years at City Cafe for-to create our own personal style of food. And it was so well-received. It started out as country French food, and it kept expanding all the time." Eclecticism, Not Fusion "We did some really groundbreaking stuff. This was in 1984, and still, when our City Cuisine cookbook came out in '87, people said there's nowhere to put this book on the shelves of the cookbook aisles, because you guys are all over the map. And there just wasn't that kind of integration of different culinary ideas. We never called what we did "fusion." We always felt like we stayed very true to the Greek cuisine, or the Indian, or the Thai, or the Mexican, or the Scandinavian, or whatever it was." On-the-Job Training We slowly started learning about business, so when we launched City Restaurant, which was really the thing that put us on the map, it was a 125-seat restaurant with a full-on kitchen. It was on La Brea. We raised the $660,000, and had to do a whole prospectus. I'll never forget, my net worth was $12,000, and Susan's wasn't much more. But we were able to learn by the seat of our pants, and we've been learning ever since." How Much Is Enough? "We were just making educated guesses-or uneducated guesses. In the end, $660,000 was not enough money at all. We were completely short, and we had to get an angel to come in and sign a guarantee on a bank line of credit for us. Really, it was a stressful opening, because we only had like two-and-a-half days in the kitchen with food before we had to open the doors to the public because we were so broke." Hindsight Is 20/20 "If I knew then what I know now, I would have somehow found some financial bridge so that we could have had a little more practice before we opened. I mean, literally, the first couple weeks, there were nights that we didn't even go home, and we were really burning the candle down to zero." It's a Man's World "I think we were both ready to be on our own. And the prospect of working under men, and working our way up, and trying to fight through all of the barriers, looked less fulfilling than just starting out [on our own]. Even though we didn't even have a stove, we still opted to start out calling our own shots." Know When to Grow "The growth ... it's a really personal thing. It depends on how equipped you are for the challenge and stress of growth, and how your business is doing. I mean, we've grown where things worked out really well, and we've grown where it's created a big strain on the existing businesses, and the new businesses didn't work." On Losing Money "When I look back on it, I think, 'Well, I didn't go to college. That's about how much college might cost me. I'll just chalk it up to experience.' Now I have an even better understanding, and luckily, it didn't happen at a time when I really couldn't afford it. But I'll tell you, being an entrepreneur and being in business is a real roller coaster." A Thankless Job Has Its Rewards "When the Food Network came asking for us to come and promote our second book, and they noticed we were funny and how we finished each other's sentences, they said, 'You girls should have a TV show.' The reason we should have had a TV show was that we did all of this really thankless teaching before that, and I'm not even sure it brought bodies into the restaurant. A lot of people might have looked at it as a waste of time. But I think you never know what skill you're going to develop, [and our teaching gave us the skills we needed to do the Food Network show.]" Be a Great Boss "We learn a lot from our colleagues, and from other companies that we want to be like. We're always looking for innovative ways to really make our workplace so phenomenally attractive that we can't lose good people, and we can attract the best. Those are big goals for us all the time." My Most Rewarding Business Moments... "... are when one of our past employees mentions how working for us made a difference in their lives. It's the best feeling in the world!" Be Good at Everything "You have to be a great leader, as well as a great cook, as well as organized, because it's a business of so many details. I think there are a lot of restaurants that fall through the cracks because they're missing the boat on something, and customers just don't come back." All Work and No Play "You have to be willing to walk away when you have a pile of work on your desk and stuff that you really should get done. You've got to be willing to walk away and clear your mind and be in the moment with your children or your husband, or whoever. You have to convince yourself that it's equally, or more, important than your job." This Featured Lady was profiled by Sarah Tomlinson, a Los Angeles-based freelance writer.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Make Small Commitments. Get Big Changes.

TOP Level Selling

Presenting Yourself With Impact at Work

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.