This is Rigby.

This is Rigby.

She is a four-year old Blue Heeler mix. If you’ve seen me at a conference, there is a chance that you’ve met her. She travels everywhere with me. We’ve driven from Florida to New Brunswick together, and as far west as the Missouri River.

Strangers often ask what breed she is. She’s big for a cattle dog on account of some of the other parts of her genetic makeup. They also tell me she has a beautiful coat. One guy in a public park in Western Maryland asked me if she was a hyena.

And then there are the dog people. Occasionally we’ll find ourselves at a dog park or out on a trail and run into someone who knows dogs. “I bet you have a lot of scars on your ankles,” is a common refrain.

That’s because Heelers were bred to be farm dogs where their job is to herd cattle. What they lack in size (a typical Heeler runs around 35 lbs) they make up for in tenacity – often biting stubborn cattle on the back of their legs to get them to move. Taking one home as a pet does not somehow magically negate this instinct. Heelers are most common as pets in Australia, the country of their origin as sturdy herding dogs. I imagine a significant part of the population of Australia as having bite marks on their ankles.

Occasionally, I’ll run into someone who has a Heeler puppy. And inevitably the conversation turns to: “How long before they stop biting me?” I’ll show them the faint scars on my forearm and tell them that I got the last one about two years ago.

At this point, I’d assume you think that my decision to get such a dog was a rash Covid-era decision. Well, while it was a decision made during that time-period, it was actually well thought out. You see, I wanted a dog that would bite me.

An explanation is warranted.

Rigby came from a litter of eight puppies born to a mother caged at a kill shelter. She and her litter-mates were saved by a relief group that specifically helps find homes for Heelers. I do not know the fate of the mother.

My daughter and I had been looking to adopt a dog for some time. She was in charge of scouring the online databases of adoption availability, and I gave her one request: find a dog that is perceived to be difficult. Because of the prevalence of kill shelters throughout parts of the country where farm dogs and rural strays are more common, there are certain breeds that are more likely than others to be discarded if there is no work available to them. Heelers often fall into this category. And because they are notoriously hard to manage as puppies – they are stubborn, they bite, they herd everything, and once they make up their mind to go after something it can be hard to get them to stand down – they tend not to find forever homes. It is just easier to manage other breeds of puppy, especially for the more casual everyday dog owner.

For all of these reasons, Heelers born in a kill shelter face a difficult existence and long odds.

And that is why when my daughter shared a picture with me of an 8 week old Heeler mix available for immediate adoption, I jumped at the opportunity.

And you know what? All those warnings about Heelers being difficult puppies? They turned out to be entirely true. Rigby was a complete terror. I have scars on my forearms, my ankles, even my lip. There are deep holes in my yard from her digging for moles. She even tore up earth to make her own dog run – not in a place where she should have, but once on task she was not going to stop. She was intensely territorial and let you know it.

But she also had an innately gentle side. We have three cats and she immediately bonded with the youngest of them. When we brought her home, she was only three pounds heavier than our biggest cat. She’s grown to be six times that size. But she has always treated the cats with care (though they don’t always want to play tag).

After bringing her home, I watched video after video of so-called experts demonstrating how to deal with stubborn puppies. Generally, the only thing they agreed upon was that they didn’t agree with one another (and you could find out why by purchasing their new book on Amazon).

I took her to obedience training where she mastered each command quickly and just as quickly added them to her list of things to ignore. After twelve weeks of obedience training sessions, the trainer suggested we put an electronic collar on her. I didn’t want to do that, so we went looking for an alternative.

And the alternative I found was to just take her with me wherever I went.

So we went to the park together. We went to the bookstore together. We went to lunch together. Following the Covid lockdowns, I got a new work space in a building that allowed dogs.

We became regulars at the dog park and she started learning how to be a dog by hanging out with all the other dogs.

People began to comment on how well behaved she was at the dog park.

As business picked up, I started traveling again. Most of my customers and most of the conferences I attended are within a three-day drive from home. So she jumped in the backseat and we went out on the highway.

She’s met colleagues and business partners. She’s taken walks with CEOs and the directors of government programs. She’s stayed at side-of-the-highway motels and fancy conference hotels and everything in between. She’s made friends with valets, bellhops, cleaning staff, and late-arrival managers across a dozen states.

She’s been to New York City where she rode the subway. She’s been to Kansas City where she got around town on the streetcars. She’s camped in the wilds of Maine and has made friends at the beach in St. Augustine (where she signed up for surfing lessons).

She makes new friends wherever she goes (which helps me to be social as well).

But if you had just looked at her stats as a puppy – Blue Heeler, aggressive, bites, stubborn, born in a kill shelter – you might have passed on her. And maybe for fair reasons.

I think we make a lot of choices for what we think are fair reasons. In our personal lives, we sometimes give in to unwarranted demands in order to limit our exposure to conflict. In business we endlessly try to de-risk, and we tell ourselves all of the reasons why we can not do something. We go out of our way to follow rules, manage checklists, score well on rubrics, and comply with the status quo. We tell ourselves that we are innovating when even the process we follow to make innovation happen is itself an endless array of rules, checklists, and rubrics. We convince ourselves that this de-risking is a good thing. That it is common sense.

We look for answers in the opinions of self-described experts. We purchase the training program that has (allegedly) worked for so many others and yet never seems to work for us. We throw money at problems and if the problems won’t go away, we try to divest ourselves from them.

This all makes sense, of course. After all, who knows better than experts? And if something works for someone else, but doesn’t work for me, then obviously there is a problem that I just have to shed myself of.

Rigby sheds a lot. She’s come to own the sofa in my work space and when people come by, I warn them not to sit on it – not because the dog will get angry, but rather because they’ll stand up with their clothes camouflaged in dog hair. Rigby can also get talkative. Especially if she thinks it has been too long since her last snack. Sometimes, the whining can drive you crazy. But in the grand scheme of things, I’m willing to make the tradeoff of occasional whining for cookies in exchange for a best friend and loyal companion who follows me wherever I go.

I’ve never really thought of myself as an optimist. I tend to be a bit too practical about dealing with problems and putting out fires. I generally expect the worst always happening, and I plan accordingly. But I think there may be a bit of optimism worth exploring. And it’s the variety that says that bright things lie waiting in the darkest of places. And we can only blame ourselves if we pass over the difficult journey it would have taken to find them on account of the risk and pain involved.