Fram! Fram!

Fram! Fram! A small school near my kennel has this phrase as part of their college seal -- from the original scandinavian language it translates roughly to "Forward! Forward!" This seems obvious to a sled dog. Forward is the next smell, forward is the next view, forward is the next everything, and in our world next is best. It is not that we do not begrudingly learn commands that halt or even reverse our movement forward, but "whoa" and "haw back", are admittedly not our strengths. Often an unnecessary stop has unwanted implications, and turning around creates circumstances in which tangles, spills, and general frustration, for both humans and dogs alike, are a real possibility. That is not to say that we don't learn from the past. Thin ice or a moose encounter will be remembered, but not by going back to look at the site of a bad decision or an unhappy incident. As far as a sled dog is concerned, let the learning be applied to the next moose, the next challenge. For people, "Whoa" and "Haw back" seem to be embedded in fear of change and regret. I'm not much of an expert on that perspective, but it seems to me that staying put often results in missed opportunity, and enabling regret with a "haw back" to the past only seems to result in tangles. Fram!, Fram! -- I think those college founders were on to something. Pull the hook and let's go.

Bombo