Small investments for big returns...

As Maiki has begun her return to a more normal active life, it's allowed me to begin walking with the other dogs again. I had hardly seen some of them during the long weeks of Maiki's injury and enforced rest. We're still not going for walks with the whole pack, as Maiki shouldn't get too excited or run too much just yet. So we've settled into a routine of going out with just one dog at a time. At the crack of dawn, we head out to a nearby country area with Nelson and take our morning walk while the sun is rising. In the afternoon, we escape the scorching summer heat by taking a short walk in the forest with Buba. And in the evening, we wander over to the nearby park, where she can play with a few other puppies. Poor Hugo (the German Shepherd) is still missing out, as we're only able to see him now and then.... but that will change as autumn approaches.

You'd imagine that taking only short walks would have a negative impact on our kilometre count and our goal of walking 2021 km in 2021. In fact, when I checked our end-of-July total today, I was encouraged to see that we were well on target. With fewer than 200 km to go, we'll probably reach our goal by the end of September, same as we did last year. What's kept us on track this year, is that I've recorded and included all of our walks, even if they were very short ones of less than a kilometre. All of those short distances have added up to make a very encouraging total - a reminder of how even small investments, if carried out faithfully, can actually contribute to something very worthwhile.

Another thing that has drawn my attention to the value of "small investments" is some trick training that I've done with Nelson this year. I taught Nelson all the important stuff (sit, stay, come, don't pull on the lead...) when he was just a puppy, but his owners told me that he'd become a bit lazy recently, over the months of not going out with the pack. It was time to retrain some of those behaviours and I decided to stretch his brain a little bit by teaching him a couple of new tricks too. Of course, I didn't have much time available, so I was able to make an investment of only 3 minutes per day. In ten days or so, I discovered that you can teach an old dog new tricks and that even such small daily commitments can add up to make a difference. (You can see Nelson's little YouTube video by clicking here or on his photo at the top of this blog post.) 

It's got me thinking about the other areas of our lives where we might want to see change and growth, but feel that we can't really commit enough time to make a difference. Perhaps you'd like to memorise scripture, spend more time in prayer or read the Bible from cover to cover. Perhaps you've been wanting to exercise to help your physical fitness or you're studying a language and wanting to increase your vocabulary. Perhaps you've been meaning to tidy out that garage or that wardrobe but just haven't got round to making a start....  I wonder if that "big" task could actually be achieved by making a small but regular investment - maybe just three or five minutes a day. It's given me food for thought.