Writing Lessons From my Dogs: Self-Belief

Do you suffer from a lack of belief in yourself or your potential as a writer? Does that keep you from putting fingers to the keyboard or pen to paper? If yes, I’d suggest you watch your dog more closely or take yourself to a dog park.

Those who follow this blog know I’m on my fifth and sixth pups, not counting the two I was raised with growing up. Hoover and Dashiell, English Cocker Spaniel half-brothers, came first, some 25 years ago. At the time, my then-partner and I had been noodling the possibility of adopting kids.

“It’ll be 50-50 on the care front,” he assured me.

Since I was the breadwinner, it needed to be. Before I took the gamble, I figured we’d see what 50-50 looked like by starting with a puppy. We ended up with two, a nine-week-old and a twelve-week-old. I quickly discovered that 50-50 looked a whole lot like 95-5. Needless to say, we did not adopt. The dogs lasted. The relationship eventually did not.

But I digress, so let’s get back to the topic of belief.

Hoover and Dashiell’s favorite game was one I dubbed Search & Rescue, a nod to the years I lived in a small high-Sierra ski resort. The game consisted of the pups trying to find a ball I’d thrown into thick ground cover or a snowbank. Despite being sport dogs historically bred to flush out birds, my two nose-challenged Cockers mostly only recovered the ball by stepping on it. Their consistent failure didn’t phase them one bit. They loved trying to sniff out the missing sphere and never lost their belief that they would eventually come up with it.

Fast forward to my current pup Misha, the 6-year-old Aussie-mix. He and his sister, Harley, who belongs to my friend Leah, are dedicated hunters. They’re convinced that they’re going to catch the chipmunks and cottontails they routinely chase when out on an off-leash walk together, to the point where they lose all hearing faculties when pursuing their prey. More often than not, if there was even a critter to begin with, Leah and I see their quarry escape, while the pups remain laser-focused on the rock pile or tree trunk they’ve targeted.

With the exception of a single event where Harley snagged the same bunny not once but twice in a matter of minutes, which, thankfully, I missed, they haven’t come close to catching anything. Yet, the look that passes between them reveals how deeply they believe.

With luck, Misha and Harley will never hone their hunting skills. That’s a different story when it comes to the written word. If you want to be a writer, you just need the belief that you can realize your dream. Then do what it takes to make it happen.

Here’s to that and to having unleashed fun along the way!

This article was originally published on One Stop Writing Shop's blog at https://lindengross.com/2025/02/06/belief/.