What a Poop-Eating Dog Can Teach Us About Creativity

As a child, the first real novel I read by myself was Call of the Wild by Jack London. I’m not sure how old I was. Around ten maybe. From that moment on, I wanted to be a writer. Also, I wanted a sled dog. Preferably one that was the size of a VW bug, half wolf, and named “Dagger”. Hey, I was only ten, okay.

I did eventually get a sled dog when I was in my early-twenties. She was a beautiful Alaskan Malamute who I named Kolob. Okay, I admit this name was not much better than Dagger. In my defense, I named her after Kolob Canyon in southern Utah because it’s one of the most beautiful places on the whole planet. I didn’t know at the time that the canyon was named after an important and sacred aspect of the L.D.S. religion. After I found that out, I always felt like I was being sacrilegious every time I yelled at my dog…which was a lot.

You see, the reason Malamutes make such great sled dogs is because they’re stubborn. Very, very, very stubborn. That celebrated tenaciousness that allows these hardy dogs to pull a heavy sled through the arctic, translates to complete and utter pigheadedness in normal, everyday life. That dog was virtually untrainable for two inexperienced dog owners like my wife and me.

Sure, she looks innocent enough, but under that
fluffy exterior is the stubbornness of a mule.

We got her as a pup when we were dirt poor, going to school, and still lived in a small, basement apartment that didn’t technically allow pets. We had no yard. The dog had to go everywhere we went. To work, to the store, on vacation, everywhere. To say it was inconvenient and irresponsible for us to have this horse-sized dog is an understatement.

A few of the highlights of this time included things like cleaning Kolob’s puke up off our living room carpet and seeing still living spaghetti-like worms squirming around in it. Or spending hours pulling porcupine quills out of her face with needle-nosed pliers. Or riding in the Jeep with her after she’d been sprayed by a skunk. Or, even worse, riding in the Jeep with her after she’d found and EATEN human feces. I might add that she liked to ride with her head poking up from the back seat between my wife and me where we could get a face full of her hot, moist breath!

Later on, we moved to a different apartment and we had to keep Kolob in a kennel at my father-in-law’s house. I had to take her for a walk every day or she would bark all night long and keep the whole neighborhood awake. Since I was both working and going to school full time, that wasn’t easy. On most days, the only time I could walk her was late at night. Sometimes I managed to get to it around 9:00 or 10:00 pm, but often it was after midnight. No matter the time, I was always exhausted and in no mood to walk my obstinate dog.

Kolob died several years ago on Easter Sunday. I thought that it would be a relief to finally be rid of that ridiculous dog. Instead, I cried.

In short, that dog was 100lbs of trouble, expense, inconvenience, and stubbornness.

And I loved her.

To the best of my knowledge, Kolob had not (recently)
eaten any excrement prior to the taking of this picture. 

My writing hasn’t gone much better. I remember in fourth grade, right about the time I read Call of the Wild and decided I would be a writer, I was put in some kind of group for students who were deemed “advanced writers”. Once a week, they pulled a few of us out of our regular classes, and we went with some strange lady I didn’t know to learn how to become the next Shakespeare.

At that time, I was obsessed with writing about potatoes. Yes, you read that right: potatoes. I can still remember the first story I wrote and shared with the others in the group. It featured potato people driving around in potato cars, and I thought it was the most hilarious and amazing thing, ever. I can still see the disappointed face of the teacher as I read. She had this forced smile that clearly said, “I’m just smiling to be polite, and I really can’t understand why a moron like you is in this group.”

In Jr. High, it only got worse. I was the perfect stereotype of the melodramatic teenager. I was convinced that nobody had ever been through the horrendous trials I was going through and certainly nobody had ever felt them as deeply and completely. I’m not sure what exactly I thought these trials were since I had a great life, two loving and supportive parents, and loads of good friends. Nevertheless, I poured out my "tortured" (by hormones, maybe?) soul into piles and piles of really embarrassing poetry.

At one point, my 8th grade English teacher actually called my parents in for a meeting because she was so worried about me. Not long after that, in a fit of adolescent angst, I burned everything I’d written up to that point. "I’ll show them," I said to myself. "I’ll never write again!" I kept writing.

In high school, I continued my downward spiral by writing sappy, cliché-filled love poetry into the wee hours of the morning and then sleeping through all my classes the next day. I also started writing short stories that usually featured withdrawn and disaffected rock climbers finding enlightenment in the middle of impossible free-solos just before they fell to their death. I never actually said what that enlightenment consisted of, but it was implied that it was a really big deal and made the whole dying thing totally worth it. As you can see, I was still leaning toward the melodramatic.

In college, I got into journaling. I liked to call these journals my “writer’s notebooks” because calling them journals sounded too sissy to me. These journals are full of lots and lots of rants about all the great things I would be writing if it weren’t for all the work and school that got in the way. It’s amazing how much you can write about not writing.

Since college, I have continued to work on my writing throughout my eleven year career as a teacher. Why? Like that big, dumb dog of mine, it doesn’t make any sense. There’s nothing practical or reasonable about it.

Or is there? When I think about it now, raising a pigheaded puppy, even when it sometimes bordered on nightmarish, gave me a sense of purpose. There was this nearly helpless little animal that needed me all the time. She kept me from focusing too much on just myself, my own wants and my own problems. When it comes right down to it, that dog might have saved me thousands of dollars in therapy. College was one of the most difficult and stressful times of my life, and I spent night after night walking my dog in the foothills of Ogden under the stars. As it turns out, that preposterous dog was exactly what I needed most.

Maybe our creative interests are the same. On the surface, they don’t make sense. They seem like they’re not worth the time, trouble, and expense. They’re not practical. They might make us feel like we’re being downright irresponsible. They may, at times, even seem like 100 lbs. of bad breath steaming up our glasses.

But, like my dog, as we look back over the years I think we’ll find that our creative endeavors paid off in subtle, less tangible ways. What at first glance might seem like a long string of creative catastrophes, will turn out to be exactly what we needed most.

Kolob in her element.

How to Hold Hands with a Rattlesnake

Last summer, my wife, Ruth, decided to run up Ben Lomond Peak, one of the toughest mountains in the Ogden area. As she scrambled up through the boulders near the top, she reached up and grabbed a good ledge. The rock felt strange. There was something about the texture that felt off. She used the ledge to pull herself up and… it kind of squished. That was not rock. Rock does not squish.

She turned to look at the ledge she was holding and saw scaly skin on a long slender body leading to a rattle on one end and a diamond-shaped head on the other. The snake slowly turned to look at Ruth, and then it rudely stuck its forked tongue out at her. Alone on the top of a mountain, eight miles from the trail head, Ruth found herself becoming much more closely acquainted with a rattlesnake than she would have preferred.

After doing the obligatory freak out which may or may not have involved some colorful language that caused the nearby  mountain goat mothers to cover the ears of their kids, Ruth took the snake’s picture. I guess she wanted evidence of the encounter. To most of us normal people, that’s like meeting a knife wielding murderer alone in an alley and saying, “Hey, since you didn't end up murdering me, would you mind if I took your picture? My friends are never going to believe this otherwise.” And the murderer is like, “Sure, why not?” Then he poses with you for a selfie before continuing on his way.

This is the picture Ruth took of her snake.

The thing is, with all the grabbing of rattlesnakes and all, Ruth kind of forgot to finish going to the top. Or maybe she just didn’t want to meet any more lethal animals up there like a cougar or something. Either way, after working her tail off for eight miles and gaining over 3,500 feet in elevation, she turned around and headed back down without standing on the summit.

When she got home, I asked Ruth how her run went and she told me the story. I know I’m probably not going to get the "Husband of the Year" award for this, but I started laughing. I mean, you have to admit, it’s a funny story. Who gets away with using a rattlesnake as a handhold without getting bit? I thought it was a pretty hilarious. Ruth didn’t agree.

After scowling at me until I quit laughing, Ruth said, “Well, at least I finally climbed Ben Lomond Peak.”

I said, “Wait. No you didn’t.”

She said, “Of course I did. Why would you say I didn’t?”

“Because you didn’t actually stand on the top.” Yes, that’s what I said. Apparently, after 17 years of marriage, I still hadn’t learned when I should just shut up.

“What are you talking about? I was only like 30 feet from the top.”

For some reason I couldn’t let it go. I said, “Yeah, but you didn’t stand on the top, so you can’t really say you climbed it.”

“There was a rattlesnake!”

At this point I was pretty sure Ruth was wishing she’d brought that stupid snake home so she could beat me to death with it. In a pathetic attempt to smooth things over, I said, “I know, and that’s totally crazy and it must have been really frightening and I don’t blame you at all for going down, but…” Seriously, where did that “but” come from?

“But what?!”

“But you still didn’t make it to the top,” I mumbled and then ran away before Ruth could strangle me. Lucky for me, she was still tired from running the peak, so I was able to outrun her.

Don’t get me wrong, I truly respect what Ruth was able to accomplish. She worked long and hard for the fitness she needed to run up a big mountain on rugged trails. She navigated her way up there, negotiated the steep and slippery snow drifts blocking her way near the summit, and planned accurately for how much food, water, and time she would need. She just didn’t quite get past the rattlesnake guarding the top and endure to the end.

When it comes to creative projects, I, too, have a hard time enduring to the end. For every project I finish, there are a dozen I don’t. Just like Ruth's run up Ben Lomond Peak, I often put a ton of work into a project only to abandon it right near the end. There’s usually some seemingly small obstacle that gets in my way and I become too frustrated to continue. At least Ruth can say that she was stopped by something that could easily kill her. I don’t have anything near that good of an excuse.

I have sketch books filled with thumbnails and rough drafts for art projects that never came to fruition. I have notebooks filled with abandoned poems and stories that never had a chance to reach their potential. Even my yard is filled with unfinished creative projects like the big area that I call my “rock garden”, but it’s actually just a patch of weeds and dog poop because I never finished it.

Just as you can’t climb a peak without exposing yourself to the inherent dangers that come with the mountains, we can’t set out to do creative work without “delivering ourselves up to be afflicted” (Matthew 24: 9). Maybe we’re not facing rattlesnakes, but we are in danger of being poisoned by criticism, rejection, negativity, and many other afflictions (like callous husbands that laugh at you, for instance). These things can easily undermine our confidence and faith in our talents and abilities if we let them.

One of the best ways I know to overcome these obstacles is by remembering the revelation given to Joseph Smith in the Doctrine and Covenants. In it we are promised “…all things wherewith you have been afflicted shall work together for your good” (D&C 98:3), and “…thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment; And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high; thou shalt triumph over all thy foes” (D&C 121:7-8).

I suppose this is a little like the Mormon version of "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" but only “if thou endure it well”. If you do what I usually do and get angry, frustrated, throw a temper tantrum, and quit, then it will all be for nothing. That hardly qualifies as enduring it well. But if we put our trust in God and continue in diligence and faithfulness, we are promised that the afflictions we face, even the one’s involving our creative work, will end up being for our benefit.

That same summer, Ruth successfully summited several other peaks. Some of them went smoothly. Others, not so much. On Lewis Peak, she was nearly struck by lightning while running down a trail that had turned into a cascading stream in the downpour (just for the record, I did not find this one funny at all). On Mount Ogden, she ran out of food and water and had to practically crawl back to the car (okay, that one’s a little funny).

You might be wondering why Ruth kept running up mountains that seemed bent on killing her. It's true that you can’t climb a peak without exposing yourself to the inherent dangers and challenges that come with the territory, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth climbing. Ruth knew the same thing James did when he wrote, “Behold, we count them happy which endure” (James 5:11). Likewise, completing our creative goals might be fraught with affliction, but these hazards are well worth facing because "...he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved" (Mark 13:13).

This is the Ben Lomond Peak trail. You can see why it's worth it. (Photo: sisoutah.com)

 P.S.

In case you're wondering why Ruth's rattlesnake didn't bite her, it was most likely because it was early in the morning and the temperatures were still quite cool. Being coldblooded, the snake simply wasn't warmed up enough yet to strike. The snake was sitting on an east-facing rock waiting for the sun to rise and heat it up. If Ruth had slept in a little later, this might have been a very different story! One that even I would not think was very funny.