Sarah A. I must say, faith is a belief in something, while doubt is an uncertainty of the validity of what you believe in. Therefore, doubt is not an element or component of faith, but it does lead to it. Doubting is a process of searching. It means evaluating what you believe and comparing it to what others believe about that same subject. A lack of doubt concerning the subject of your faith suggests an ignorance of what you believe. Doubt causes a person to examine what they believe and become familiar with it. Doubting, no matter how much or how little, leads to faith. There are times when doubting a subject in your faith causes you to look into it and find faith in a something opposite of what you previously believed, yet the doubt still leads to faith. Without this uncertainty, faith cannot be found or strengthened. It is a vital process to finding faith.
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Coming Back to the Pack
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Over the course of the hour Millan won me back with the simplicity of his logic. As his critics point out, there is a rigid uniformity to his methods and a one-size-fits-all nature to his philosophy of dog psychology. It brought to mind why I don't watch his show very much anymore: because it can get repetitive. In his hands every problem—no matter what it is, no matter what breed of dog—seems to have the same solution. On the other hand, it's hard to argue with his results. As Cesar says, "Seeing is believing." And after we finished talking, Aidan got some one-on-one time with the Dog Whisperer. It was just a few minutes and not, as Cesar prefers, in Aidan's home environment, where he can observe how our dog would behave on a normal day. But even in that short meeting, Millan's wizardlike facility with dogs—the calm he brings to them, the confident way he handles them—was mind-blowing.
Every now and then Aidan can be headstrong and, well, kind of a brat. He was in a public place with lots of people around—the kind of environment where he could go into excitement overload. But when Cesar turned his attention to our dog, Aidan looked at him as if he were the only person in the world. Cesar patted a spot on the bench where he was sitting and Aidan hopped right up to it, which is something he might do for us, but only if he felt like it. Aidan was behaving submissively, but not with the zombielike connotations that the word implies. He knew he was being good, and his swirling tail was a dead giveaway that he was pleased with himself for it. Then Cesar put a gentle hand on Aidan's rump and he sat down, threw his shoulders back and squatted proudly and patiently on his front paws while the two of them posed for a photo. (Yeah, we took a picture of them together. Sue me.) Aidan was a happy boy. That's all it took. I was a believer again.
© 2007
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