Raising Greatness

She was sent from heaven when I was seven. My first dog, that is. My wife was too, but that was 13 years or so later! This beautiful collie showed up at our house with a three-foot-long rope around her neck. She had chewed through it and escaped from her owners, who lived several miles from our house. She was a beautiful full-bred old-fashioned collie. Of course, we took her in and named her Lassie, after my favorite TV show back then. She looked the part and had a heart of gold and a golden coat that matched. My mother knew the dog belonged to another family, so she took out an ad in the paper, and the other family called three weeks later. Of course, I was attached for life to my Lassie girl. It broke my heart as they came and took her. She and I had bonded like a dog and an adventurous little boy do. She didn’t look so happy either. But within a few days, she chewed through the rope from which they had tied her to a tree in their backyard and miraculously found her way back to us. Such a miracle. We called the owner, and this time they said, “She obviously loves you all more than us, so you can have her.”

She became my anchor to unconditional love in a world of conditional acceptance… the first foundation needed in raising greatness in our children.