My puppy is showing me things about herself in the future sometimes. She’ll do things that look like a grown up border collie, and I think, hmmm. What have I got myself into here?

Then she flops over upside down and makes the craziest face. She looks a little bit like a baby polar bear when she’s upside down. She wants her tummy scritched. She wants to BITE something with her razor sharp puppy fangs. And I’m all, oh yeah. She’s just a puppy. A puppy who’s herself and who is nobody else.

I’m not always super clear on what she thinks of me. She goes insane, wackadoodle crazy for Gary when she sees him. He gets the biggest wiggles. I’m pretty fun too! I am the chief game player. I organize excursions. I administer the food. I have even cooked a hunk of a sad, dead pig in my formerly vegan home oven. But I also have the rules. And every so often I see a glimmer of what I see in Otterpop’s face sometimes. That look that says, “You know who’s running the show here, right?”

This is the thing I love about Otterpop, and the thing that I sometimes dread about her. There are many wheels turning in that tough little coconut shell.

When I yell, “BANKSY!” she races all the way across the grass at 100mph to get to me. Her legs all don’t match at the moment and she has one floppy ear, and those blue eyes are like laser beams focused on me. They are a little bit scary when she turns them on. Only on me. This is something I like very much. I get those eyes lasering their gaze straight through me.

Banksy’s teaching me something every day. How to be a better trainer. How to be more patient. How to do stuff really, really quick. How to pay attention. How to not have expectations, and to train the puppy what she needs to be trained at that exact moment in time.

You’d think I’d know all this already. I seem to forget a lot. Banksy doesn’t mess around. She’s going to make sure I remember. Here’s a quote from the other Banksy that helps me remember.

“Think outside the box, collapse the box, and take a fucking sharp knife to it.”- Banksy

I think my Banksy would agree.