Katherine Leslie’s comments generated a great deal of feedback as well as some fodder for thinking about things a little differently… Like many of you, I have been processing her views. I continued that processing as I engaged in my morning ritual with Reilly, one of my two Border collies. She sleeps next to me, and every night before we go to sleep, and every morning when the alarm first wakes us up, we have a “love-in”. She gets her tummy rubbed, she groans, she stretches, she just basks in it. Now this is noteworthy because there is almost never another moment during the day when this occurs. Once her feet hit the floor, attention/affection/affirmation must come in the form of a yellow tennis ball. If you pay her any attention at all, she looks at you like “hold that thought!” and runs for any one of the ten or so tennis balls that decorate my floor at any given time. Playing ball with her really fills her tank. And it fills mine too, although in a different way than our love-in sessions do.


The new dog, Ben, and the two “big dogs”, Lexie and Chance, are far more content to have a love-in any time, any place, for any reason. In fact, they insist upon it. Ben has the most amused look on his face as he watches Reilly obsess over the tennis ball. He doesn’t get it…


The point here is this… our relationships are supposed to fill our tanks, and we are to fill the tanks of the other party in the relationship. It isn’t a one-way street. And while all relationships will be unique, they must still be fulfilling to both parties to be successful. And as part of our job, we are to figure out what fills the tank of the other party, and do our best to meet those needs. And they are to figure out how to meet our needs... or we must teach them.


So for Reilly, filling her tank means throwing a ball 25 hours a day, and allowing for the fact that I get to love on her only twice a day. But she and I both get a great deal of pleasure from this relationship… she unquestionably gives back to me. We have developed our own dance, and it is working for us.

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