#111: Life Lessons from a “Forever Puppy”

And we've got to water ourselves like we're plants. We've got to water ourselves like we're crops. Because if we don't, if we don't, we dry up just like those crops. They dry up. And if there's too little rain for too long a period of time, Everything just sort of dies and eventually turns to dust and blows away. I know that's pretty dramatic imagery there, and it's true.

I want to spend a little time today talking about something that I didn't expect to be talking about and didn't expect certainly to be making the subject of a podcast episode, but I just started to feel more and more like there were a lot of people, again, who would probably identify with what I'm about to share and whose lives have been impacted in some way by similar things and maybe even going through the same thing or experiencing something similar in this, at this present time. And that's no coincidence. I just don't believe that there are any coincidences at all. So if you are one of those people that when you're listening to this, it resonates with you and feels like something that you needed to hear, That the timing of it was perfect. It was sort of an ordained thing, whatever language you use for that kind of stuff. I don't think of coincidences. I always think everything is just happening in this divine perfection that I don't always understand. I'm not always happy about. I'm always embrace— always embracing the changes or embracing the pivots in life as I'd like to, but I certainly am aware that that's the process. When I'm at my best, that's what I'm doing. That's what I can do. I can choose to embrace everything in every moment as something that is there for my good, there for my highest good, even something that is purposeful, intended, and only coming from one single source, one well, one deep, bottomless, infinite well of love. And with that understanding, even the worst of things, the toughest of things, the most challenging of things, can have their place and be seen and experienced in perspective. I think that's as much as we can ever do.

When we lose people that we love, when things are different than we'd like them to be, that's our choice. We can either embrace those things and accept those things, or we can resist them. We can fight against them. We can bury our head in the sand and pretend that they aren't actually happening. These are all choices we have when it comes to— That experience, and it changes everything. The way that we handle it, the way I approach it, the way I meet it, whatever it is, is all there is. The thing itself has almost no meaning other than the meaning we give it. The meaning that I give it is all it really means anyway. So how I meet it and the choices that I make in the moment of meeting it, whatever it is, is— Really the essence of whether I feel good or I feel like shit. And even when I choose to feel like shit, it's more by design. If it's how I want it to be, then I'm even taking hopefully conscious responsibility for feeling crappy and allowing myself to feel that way for a good reason and not just feeling that way without the awareness that I have a choice to make about that. I can choose to feel that way. I can also choose to feel some other way. So the last couple of weeks, actually the last sort of 5, 6 weeks have been challenging for us and not just for me but for my family because we had 2 members of our family that we've had with us for the better part of 13 years and their names are Willie and Duncan Wilson, Mr. Wilson as we've called him since we got him as a 10-week-old puppy, a black lab, a beautiful Beautiful black lab who was the runt of his litter. He had something called a cleft palate, something unusual. And people are born with cleft palates. Dogs and other animals are born with cleft palates sometimes, very infrequently, rarely actually. And when that does happen, more often than not, a breeder— if the dog is born from a breeder, typically they don't pay for a surgery. You know, they put the dog down, as sad as that sounds. Because it's expensive surgery and the dog is not as intended. Well, the breeder that we went to 13 years ago did not feel that way at all about that beautiful being that was born with a cleft palate. And instead she decided to pay the money, which was more than $1,000 at the time, for surgery to repair the cleft palate for this little puppy. And she had to give the dog a name in order to have the surgery. go forward, they had to know what the name of the dog was. So she gave him a name. She called him Mr. Wilson, which is hearkening back to a TV show called Dennis the Menace. Some of us are old enough to remember that show. Most of us probably are not. But either way, Mr. Wilson's a character in the show. So that became Mr. Wilson. And a couple of weeks later— more than a couple, I think— but we ended up seeing him. And our youngest daughter Eden looked immediately and said, oh, that's the puppy. That's the one. We got to get that one. The littlest one, because he wasn't able to eat. And so all the other dogs were getting all the food and he was just this runt. And he got moved into a different litter of younger dogs still. And he was still the smallest of the younger dog group, this other litter. But at the end of the day, we took him home. We fell in love with him and brought him home and he became a member of our family and a very wonderful member of the family. And about a year later, we had a second arrival. This was unexpected because we'd had dogs in the past. We love dogs. We're dog people. Had cats too. We've had gerbils, goldfish, all kinds of animals living in our home. And about a year later, friends of ours came over, they said, hey, we want to bring someone over to show you guys. And they brought their little puppy over whose name was Duncan. He's a little golden retriever, yellow furball. And in our house, we were living in Freehold at the time in New Jersey. And they walk in and of course we're like, oh my God, this dog is just gorgeous little furry thing. And Wilson, who is now a year old and he is no longer— let's just put it this way, he is no longer the runt. He caught up eating-wise very, very quickly. So he's an English Lab. He's stocky and low to the ground and he's thick and wide and all the rest that you can imagine. He's a big dog and was at that point probably 80 or 90 pounds. And so he's like just literally towering over this little furball that's— I don't even know how— maybe 8 pounds or something like that. And then we find out from our friends, this was a pretty interesting move on their part. They said, well, We would love to keep him, but our kid, our son, is allergic to him. And we're like, oh, okay. And they go, so we just wanted to know if maybe you know somebody. You could probably figure out where this is going. They go, yeah, man, if you know anybody, you know, in the neighborhood, people that you know that might really would love a puppy, this is a great dog, but our son is allergic. We can't keep him. It's so sad, blah, blah, blah. So you know exactly what happens, right? So that dog never leaves our house after that. It's like, well, the dog is staying. And now we have these 2 beautiful big— well, Duncan was tiny at the time, but he grew fast. And about a year later, he was also about 80 pounds, 90 pounds. And Duncan— and Wilson at this point was like over 100 pounds. So Wilson didn't end up eating him. We didn't know for sure whether he'd be territorial and jealous and Any of the other kind of things, but no, they became brothers from another mother, literally, and the fastest of pals and did everything together. Slept in the same room together and they were just buds in the deepest sense of the word. I mean, we would later on find, years later, that Willie would get these ear infections and he was more prone to them and we'd catch Duncan like licking his ear. We knew Willie had an ear infection when Duncan would be licking his ear. Because we knew Willie was in pain, but we didn't know it. He wasn't— he's a dog, couldn't say, hey, by the way, I got an ear infection, can you handle this please? You know, it's like it wasn't until he could tell he was shaking his head or just there were other signs and take him to the vet and they said, oh yeah, he's got an ear infection again, you know. But the telltale was Duncan's, just his love and his care for his buddy, his brother, which was just so beautiful. And when we were Living on the East Coast at the time, we would go every summer to Martha's Vineyard, to this little island off the coast of Cape Cod. And it was there that we would spend so much time walking. Love, love, love walking. I love walking with these dogs. These are just my buds to walk with and my companions. And we'd walk down these dirt roads and walk to the beach and walk to the pond. And these two were like— at least Wilson, let's say, he's a black lab, so he's part duck, in case you don't know. They literally have skin and fur and everything, like, just like a duck. The water just sort of sheeds right off of him. And so he would love to go in the water, man. I mean, water was just his thing. And Duncan, this much longer fur, his longer hair, golden retriever, he did not dig the water at all. I mean, we could tell pretty early he was not going to be that kind of a retriever. He'd go retrieve stuff. You throw a ball, throw a stick, he'd go get it. But man, when it If you threw the stick into the ocean, you threw the stick into the pond, he just let it go. He just wouldn't go in after it because he just wasn't into it. And me, I am a Pisces. I love the water. It is my place. It's where I find the greatest peace and I can get back to myself and regenerate my energy and regenerate my spirit. And so many things from that water environment. And so I swim, and to be in a place that's as gorgeous and beautiful, breathtaking as the Nantucket Sound or the Vineyard Sound, and swim was everything. So I would take the dogs down and get in the water, and Wilson, classic Wilson, he'd go in, he'd do a little lap, and he'd go out 10, 15 yards, turn around, come back in. That was as much exercise as that dog ever wanted to have. And Duncan, on the other hand, because he hated the water for whatever reason, it's just really interesting, he would bark at the shore. He would bark. But then, like, despite his fear or his just dislike of the water itself, getting wet, I don't know what it was. He couldn't tell me. I couldn't ask him. He would go in the water anyway, and he would swim after me. It was the most amazing thing that he would swim behind me. And I started to notice because I would see him there and I'm swimming on usually on my stomach doing like the front crawl or the breaststroke or something. And I could tell and look back and see that he was back there.

But then I would flip over and swim on my back to be able to talk to him or look at him. And I would hear him literally crying. The dog was crying, like making sounds. Like a baby because he just didn't want to be in the water, but he wasn't going to let me swim alone. Wow. The pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. And if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new, but the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been That we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And it's the reason why my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilient leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes. And it's our gift to you. It's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. I still to this day look back. I cannot believe that this is what went on. And it went on for years that I would go down to the water and have the dogs off leash and at the beach. And I would get in to do my swim and he would get in after me and would be crying the entire time doing the doggy paddle. And he was pretty good. I mean, like, he was a good swimmer and he was strong. He's very strong in the chest and had no trouble keeping up with me. And in fact, I had to swim even faster because he was so anxious. I mean, his anxiety level was so high that if I stopped, slowed down, you know, just to talk to him or You know, whatever. His legs could cut me just from their— the sheer way that he was reacting. And then I would have to kind of keep my arm out and keep him at bay and just kind of go around to the backside of him just so he wouldn't cut me with his front paws.

And then I get after it again, just start swimming, and there he was right behind me crying the whole way, but we were together. And it was several years before that stopped, and he would get in the water and swim with me and just not be visibly upset. That's so sweet. Upset and audibly crying about it. But he really was just so amazing when we moved to the West Coast as well. We moved about 7 years ago from San Diego— from New Jersey to San Diego, and the pups came out here as well. In fact, 2 dear friends of ours, Laura and Chris, who may be listening, so shout out to these 2 beautiful friends of ours, drove the dogs out. Like, they drove our, our Suburban packed with stuff, and 2 weeks later they had seen the country cross-country. That's amazing. country drive with our part of our belongings and our 2 precious puppies, as well as some of the other animals that we had that were making their way across country. They took care of them all. And then out here, same thing. It was a beach and the sun and just a good life of walking and other things that dogs absolutely love and adore. And Duncan just became even more of a member, a mature Just member of our family as Wilson as well. Duncan was special in his qualities. In fact, one of the things that was both special and also tough sometimes to deal with was anytime I was away, I'd come home and for like 20, 30 minutes, didn't matter if I came home late at night or early or whatever, he would bark and go crazy. It was like, I can't believe you were away. I can't believe you didn't tell me you were going. But I'm so happy you're home! I'm so happy you're home! Literally just barking and wagging and jumping and going crazy every time we were away, came home. His love was just so unconditional. If we forgot to feed him, if we left him in a dark house by mistake and forgot to turn a light on and got home late or any of those kinds of things, you know, what was really remarkable is you never walked in the house and found either of those dogs to be angry. Or resentful or giving you the cold shoulder the way people do, the way I do or some other folks do, right? Where you just get upset with somebody and then you give them the business, right? Some of that passive-aggressive behavior that we've come to see so often with folks. And they just weren't coming from that place ever. It was just nothing but love, love, love, love, love, love. Oh my God, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. And completely without condition. And so when I think about Duncan, I always think about these sort of 3 things that were his character traits. One of them was this capacity to reflect unconditional love all the time, all the time. There was never a moment where I got a look from him that didn't show how much he truly loved me. And I would say that's true for every single person that is part of our family that spent any time with Duncan. Including our son-in-law Matthew, a really, really close relationship with Duncan as well, as well as our kids and Randy who took care of Duncan and Wilson all the time, all the time, just always giving them such love and such care and took them to the vet and took them to get groomed and cleaned, shaved and took care of all kinds of things when I was away on travel and all the rest of it. So yeah, he was just the embodiment of unconditional love first and foremost. Secondly, He was just this constant beacon of hope.

And I don't know if you've ever been around people who are really super hopeful, super optimistic. Our dog was just like that. I mean, he just always expected in the next moment that something great was gonna happen. He knew in the next second I was gonna get a treat. I'm gonna go to the beach. I'm gonna get walked. I'm gonna get petted. I'm gonna get hugged, kissed, loved, etc. He knew every time that something great was just about to happen. That was his anticipation. And it didn't matter whether that happened or didn't happen, whether there was this expectation that was unfulfilled. He never grew cynical about it. He never tired of it. He never became less than hopeful because the things that would have been fulfilling to him happened infrequently. We didn't take him to the beach every day.

He didn't get a treat every time he wagged his tail. There were moments in between where he was ignored and we were busy with other things and he had to take a second seat as Wilson did and as we all get to from time to time. He just was constantly hopeful. In fact, that energy of enthusiasm and hope led a friend of ours, a dear friend of ours, Jeremy, to nickname him Forever Puppy. And that nickname stuck with him for a really, really, really long time. Forever Puppy. And the last thing, the third thing about Duncan, which I just so admired and loved about him, was that he wouldn't leave us behind. He was so loyal. When I went out for long walks with him here in the hills behind our home and go out for miles and miles of walk on these dirt hills, and he would run ahead and be 10, 15, 20 yards ahead, but he would always stop and look behind and see where we were, where I was. He would come back and then go and then come back and go and he'd do these laps. Go ahead, come back. Go ahead, come back. He's constantly checking in with us and he just left nobody behind. He never left me behind. And that level of loyalty, that level of checking in is really important to us in our business. We talk in our business about more love and contributing more love in the world and more love in our marketing, more love in our every aspect of our business development, every aspect of of the business products and services that we've got. And a lot of that love translates into looking at people as relationships and not leaving them behind even if they don't feel like they want to buy a service or a product from us or they don't want to engage or whatever. It's like without the judgment that's associated often with somebody who becomes a client or somebody who chooses not to or isn't ready or whatever the case is. We just simply want to leave nobody behind. And I had learned that lesson earlier on in my life as a lifeguard at the beach, at Jones Beach, wonderful place that I got to work for 7 summers starting at age 19, and learned there that there's a cost associated with leaving people behind. People go down and drown and they're gone if you don't take care of them. And when people are in front of you and they're in your water, so to speak, It's our job to care for them, to make sure that they don't go down on our watch, that we don't leave them behind. And Duncan was like that kind of a light. He was like a lifeguard for me. That's what he was doing when we were in the ocean and he was swimming behind me and crying. He was my lifeguard. He was looking out for me. He was watching to make sure that I didn't go down on his watch. And this past week, just less than a week ago now, Duncan passed away. We had to put him down. He had advanced-stage cancer in his brain and his body was not well anymore and was declining rapidly. We had to do the most awful thing when you are somebody who has a dog or a cat or another animal that is part of your care, that you're in care of and in love with because I know Any of the folks who are out there who have animals that you're caring for, you end up loving them. You love them like any other being in your life. You love them for their qualities and for their weaknesses, their faults, and for their personalities that are so different. I mean, Willie and Duncan couldn't be any more different. And we love Willie to death, and Willie is still with us and sad. I think he's just confused at the moment and devastated by the loss because he doesn't understand it. He obviously doesn't understand it at the level— In the same way that we understand it, we can't know how he gets it. They were brothers, buddies, and deeply connected, and so I know he is mourning the loss of his buddy, his brother, his friend, his partner in crime, and everything else, as we are. And I felt pain in a different way this week from the passing of our little puppy, Duncan, our forever puppy who didn't last and go on forever. I imagine he is in the ether space, he is in eternity. I think he has really great karma and so being the being that he was, I imagine that he may have a wonderful next iteration of life's existence in some way. Whatever that might look like. Maybe he'll come back as a toucan or an eagle or some other puppy or a person maybe. Who knows? I have no way to prove any of that. I just feel that it's possible and I want to believe that his energy will be with us. I know he'll be with us in our family and the people that got to experience his love and his enthusiasm. And his loyalty, his hopefulness that people will not forget him. We've got an Instagram page called Willie Dunk, and people see pictures for years. We've had pictures of the two of those knuckleheads up, and people have gotten to know them a bit. And then friends and others have sent us notes and condolences, of course. It's tough because you don't— not necessarily prepared for the kind of grieving and mourning with a pet that you would think you'd have. Although I have friends that have lost dogs and cats and have really gone through a grieving process very similar to losing a person. And I know those 2 things are not the same. And yet our love is our love. Our love for other beings and unconditional love that we receive and feel from other beings can't be quantified in a way that makes it somehow tied to or relevant. To whether this is a person or it's a pet. I don't even consider our puppies pets. I don't even sort of love that word. They're just members of the family, and they were and are and always will be. And we had a beautiful ceremony as the family went out to the beach and set some intentions into some rocks and for Duncan and the things we want to remember about him and celebrated him and toasted him, and we'll remember him always. And I thought, well, I'm going to do a show To just share a little bit about what I've been going through. It's been tougher, tougher week than I expected it would be. And remembering him and loving him and wanting to meet wherever you are at the moment. Maybe that's something you can relate to, that you are presently mourning or remembering someone or some other being that you miss, that you love, and that you can identify with this. Maybe that's something from the past, and maybe it's something you're going through right now. But wherever that is, I will just say, I can get it. I get it. And there's a lot of people who get it as well. So we are celebrating our sweet, delicious puppy dog, forever puppy, Duncan Markel. Didn't have a middle name, just Duncan. And like the donuts and the coffee, I think. A joisy dog, good dog, sweet dog, beautiful dog. In fact, if you're watching on YouTube, I'll put a picture up so you can see. what Duncan looks like and his buddy Wilson, and you could see the hope on their faces because they're looking through the glass door into the laundry room thinking, ah, somebody's going to feed us. Somebody's going to give us a treat. Somebody's going to walk us any moment now. I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof Podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy It's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will help you to be more resilient. habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. Oh yes. And dear Duncan, again, 3 of the most amazing qualities and traits that I will always remember, this unconditional love This hopefulness, this ever-present hope for the great things that are about to happen, and his loyalty, his looking back to make sure that no one is left behind. And for me personally, that he made sure that I wasn't going to go down in his water on his watch. I love you, Duncan, and I miss you. And for everybody out there, I will remind us as often as I can that we are given the time we were given, We don't know what that will be. It's the great mystery of life. It's the great wondering and even maybe part of the great anxiety that we sometimes have about life is not knowing when it will end in this for us. So gratitude for this moment is precious. It's powerful. It is a miracle and it's a miracle that we can engage anytime, anytime that we want. Including right this moment. So regardless of whether this is the most special moment for you, whether you're feeling like you're riding on top of the world at this moment, or whether you're feeling like the world is riding on top of you at this moment, we still get to choose in this moment to be fully present in our bodies and in our minds and in our hearts. And be grateful for that. And it doesn't need to be any more complicated than that to experience something that I can describe from my hand on my heart on the shirt that says these words, I love my life, that that feeling is a feeling of peace, that feeling is joy, serenity. And I wish that for everyone. For me, for you, for all of us, as often, as often as we choose to create it. I hope that what you choose to do is create it often. And so tomorrow morning when you wake up, you can create and start to create or continue the habit that you've created of starting your day with those words. You take 10 seconds, that's all it takes. It's such a simple practice, really, 10 seconds. To put your feet on the floor and feel gratitude, feel appreciation for yourself, for your life, for others, for the universe, for your breath, and say out loud, I love my life. I love my life. I love my life. What a blessing, everybody. We'll see you soon. Ciao for now. Ciao.

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