The Bow-Wow Secrets: How Dogs Keep Their Life Simple and Men Don't

By William Cottringer

Life is simple and dogs have figured that out. A dog knows his breed and sticks to its traits - a Pomeranian never tries to be like a German Shepherd while a German Shepherd never tries to be like a Doberman. Man, on the other hand, always tries to be somebody else, making life far more complex than what it is meant to be. Dogs surely are smarter than people and in this book they share their bow-wow secrets with us.
Presented in the form of seven ‘dog laws’, the book reveals an abundance of personal, professional and spiritual wisdom to help us achieve success and happiness in our lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wisdom Tree Publishers
• Release date: Feb 4, 2011
• ISBN: 9788183282291

Book preview

© William Cottringer, 2006

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise — without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 81-8328-022-6

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Published by Shobit Arya for Wisdom Tree; edited by Swapna Raghu Sanand; designed by Kamal P. Jammual; typeset at Icon Printographics, New Delhi-110018 and printed at Print Perfect, New Delhi-110064

Foreword

I have a strong conviction that the fact that we are barely managing to survive or are thriving is not a matter of fate. I do believe in destiny but not in one that falls from the sky as a blind chance. Destiny is there but it is nothing except a mere feedback from nature on the extent to which we are living by her secret laws. Nature makes you feel ‘thriving’ when you succeed in living by these laws. Incidentally, my company’s name too is ‘Thrive!’—and its mission is just that—to help individuals and the corporate world live (and do their business) by these laws in order to thrive!

Through this book which you have in your hands, Dr William Cottringer has presented these laws of ‘thriving’ that will help you light your inner fire and be your best signature self in masterminding incredible success. Dr Cottringer’s passion for discovering these laws and the humility and sincerity with which he has been doing so is both exemplary and contagious. I am sure that through this book, he will make way into every seeker’s heart the way he has into mine. And for many, this book could prove to be a turning point in their lives.

Dr Cottringer has a very interesting and humorous way of putting across his thoughts. He is too fond of his two pet dogs ‘Boo Dan’ and ‘Amigo’. They seem to have inspired him to present the seven laws of success through their eyes. These ideas will inspire you to go from surviving to thriving with positive passion to find and live your hero within—closing the gap between your mind and spirit. Boo-

Dan and ‘Migos ‘common sense love laws’, as they refer to these choices, will surely tickle your spirit, answer some nagging questions and provide many practical, easy to apply solutions that will make a wonderful difference to your life.

Boo-Dan and ‘Migos call their contribution The Bow- Wow Secrets. They will take you on a slingshot ride to a place where you can see why and how to complete your ideal self in all spheres of your life—physical, intellectual, emotional, social, vocational, and spiritual. And you’ll be pleased to know you don’t need an extreme makeover in the way of complete brain surgery—maybe just a few small well-placed and well-timed band-aids. They call this mind power of choice.

This fast track to thriving can be read and applied in just one short week. There are seven common sense choices that make up The Bow-Wow Secrets of this 7-day fast track so that it thrives with positive passion. These choices directly address the practical questions of self-development that often go unanswered — what, why and how. Making these simple, easy choices will guarantee to help you reach your true potential with confidence and achieve genuine success, authentic happiness, and real peace. How can you go wrong? You can’t!

Somewhere within these pages, you will be finding out how to be your signature success and mastermind success, so you can help others do that too and then we can all enjoy the treasure at the finish line. There is no better time to thrive with positive passion to go from better to best

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than NOW. You are already on the right path to closing the gap between your mind and spirit.

As Eleanor Roosevelt once stated, People grow through experience, if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

I wish all of you readers the same great and enriching time ahead that I had when I read this remarkable book. All the best!

Anil Bhatnagar

Author of Success 24X7

Foreword                                                vii

Contents Foreword                                   v Brief Preface                                1 Short Introduction                          9

1.   Know What Kind Of Dog You Are            23

2.    Be The Best Dog You Can Be               49

3.    Bark But Don’t Bite                 106

4.    Help Other Dogs                     157

5.    Learn New Tricks                     191

6.    Don’t Try To Do Too Much              225

7.    Obey Your Master                  256

8.    Quick Conclusion                 284

9.    Some Afterthoughts               298 10.    More Good Dog Quotes               305

11.   Principles & Applications         308

Brief Preface              Preface

"You can’t stay in your corner of the forest,

waiting for others to come to you. You have

to go to them sometimes."

–Winnie the Pooh.

THREE TIMES A CHARM There is something that has occurred in my life so many times that it might just be true. Sometimes you have to seem to do a thing three times to finally get it right—you start out by accepting a solution that is too easy and simple and then you keep plodding ahead (but oddly, this seems as though you are going in the opposite direction, back towards the other extreme) for the more complex and convoluted solution, so that you can eventually find your way back to a balanced answer in the middle of these two extremes that is just right. This is actually a forward position—the real simplicity just on the other side of complexity, that Oliver Wendell Holmes was so fascinated with. Maybe it is the illusion of going forwards and then backwards, and the good and bad connotations those positions mean to us, that slows down and impedes this natural process of mental evolution.

At any rate I see this process as being part of the single drive in life to replace our nagging sense of deprivation and incompleteness with a relieving sense of completion

and closure in our perpetual quest to become more whole. I now sense that is the case with this present book. My first book, Getting It, was too simple, and my second one, You can have Your Cheese & Eat it Too, was too complex. Maybe this one will make the intended splash in the middle, or better stated, as the simplicity just on the other side of complexity. At least that seems to be the way of life for me. Of course, I may also just be learning the wisdom of Pooh’s advice above—trying to leave my corner of the forest and take myself to the readers, who are probably journeying somewhere in between being too simple or too complex— just right.

THE TWO VOICES OF GOD

TWO VOICES The main challenge of a personal development writer is to accurately describe common problems that delay our growth and improvement, and offer usable, practical solutions in growing and improving towards wholeness and completeness. Offering such solutions is a real challenge and can best be accomplished by means of speaking the two voices of God, as hinted in the earlier writings of philosopher elite Alan Watts and more recently by Rabbi Harold Kushner. Maybe Hodding Carter was also saying this with the two bequeaths she wanted to give her children—roots and wings. Moreover, these two voices stand for the two most misunderstood and argued-about ideas in religion—‘grace’ and ‘salvation.’ But, we won’t get into that theological debate, which is a whole book in itself.

2                                       The Bow-Wow Secrets

Besides this book is about dogs and they aren’t too big on arguing religion or politics. That doesn’t make much sense to them.

This first voice of God—unconditional love and acceptance—needs to be shouted loudly and frequently, Billy boy, I love you unconditionally and accept you exactly as you are with all your faults and foibles because I understand you completely; you don’t have to do anything to deserve my love. You have it, here it is. This is the voice we all need to hear a lot of in order to develop the sound sense of self-esteem and self-acceptance that is necessary for us to grow roots and be able to hear the hope of wings in the second voice.

The second voice of God—encouragement (small dose of reality) is an occasional, gentle whisper and playful wink, But you little twerp, we both know you can do a lot better with just a little more effort. The second voice is intended to help us grow wings and fly. Unfortunately most of us get lost somewhere in the gap between these two voices, In this book, I have tried to expose important problems and offer reasonable solutions via a balance between these two voices, because we all need roots and wings and everything in between.

The real purpose of these two voices which guide life and everything in it, is to help us make sure we all have our ladders set up against the right building—the whole, complete one that includes what Carl Jung termed our ‘shadow’, that is an integral part of our much misunderstood struggle for survival, which is the wrong building. Eventually, Brief Preface                                                3

the popular TV shows Survivor and Lost may reveal this all.

ROAD

THE WINDING ROAD I feel that we each have one great book inside us to tell our own version of The Bow Wow Secret and we have to keep trying until we finally get it right. This is our drive to get past our individual simple struggle to survive and join creation as a team member to help humanity thrive in becoming whole and complete. The trouble is our minds are continually growing and just when we think we have it all figured out, we learn something new that changes our whole viewpoint—like waking up to the disturbing reality at the top rung of our ladder, realizing it has been placed against the wrong building. It is kind of like money matters— just about the time you think you might be getting ahead, something comes along and helps you get behind. So books have to be written and read tentatively as if they are just the best picture of what may be going on right now— maybe as a slight addition or variation to a few solid truths that we are all challenged to remember and understand in our evolving voyage to completeness.

Another challenge is that readers of self-development books want a variety of things. Some of you want very concrete examples, comprehensive instructions and all the fine details of things so you can put solutions to immediate use, while others of you just want to be stimulated with new, creative and unusual ideas that are close enough to what you already know to claim and use the information

4                                         The Bow-Wow Secrets

for yourself sometime in the future. You can learn how to apply the ideas as you go, when the timing is right.

Still some of you want to either be told what to do and how to make changes in general terms, or to be reassured you are completely okay as you are without any changes at all. Needless to say, some readers want all these things and more. Addressing these four corners of self- development readers isn’t easy. For one thing, we authors have our own style of seeking and providing this same information for redistribution which makes the chances of good connection more complicated and difficult.

There is one other thing about writing self-development books that readers should know. Writers have to maintain the courage and stamina to travel to the outer edges of conscious awareness and fringes of madness, wading through a quicksand-like sea of chaos, to experience difficult and uncomfortable problems and solutions in being human—clearly enough in our minds so we can bring these ideas back and relive them painfully in our own hearts and personal lives—and then proceed to figure out how to teach others these truths.

Sometimes writers don’t know what can of worms they are opening up and they will have to survive their own worst nightmares. As the saying goes, "Be very careful of what you want because you will eventually get it (maybe just not when and how you expect it). But regardless, you can’t turn back the passion of writing or living the ultimate reality that as a writer, you are just a vehicle for ideas to flow through to reach others. The real trick is to not let Brief Preface                                              5

these ideas stick around long enough to overbrand them with too much personal editing, which only tends to pose questions on which sides to take, which in turn just delays growth into completeness and wholeness. This can easily happen when we get stuck on a particular problem in our own personal development and mistakenly over-generalize it as a common problem to which everyone else can apply your cure. Just another wrong building.

THE ONE THING Finally, I suppose the humble awakening for writers is that despite the fact that we may think we can use our 180- degree vision to see half the world from the front and then turn around and see the other half too, we are really lucky to see and tell one thing somewhere in between—the one thing that Curly kept pointing to the sky with his one finger in City Slickers. Or, Mel Gibson’s one thing in his movie The Passion—maybe a completion of a whole love via forgiveness acceptance and reconciliation of both sides of life, good and bad. My ‘one thing’ is The Bow-Wow Secrets.

Telling this one thing is what life is all about. But trying to tell it is where all the problems start happening. We all seem to have our own unique versions that seem much different and even irreconcilable at times. Nevertheless we have to get over being tongue-tied, avoid the tendency to give up, stop paying too much attention to all the other distractions, and keep trying to tell it until we get it right.

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There is one question that remains for me—Is there any good reason to not live The Bow-Wow Secrets ? Or is this something we can all finally agree upon and build on? Thirty-five years ago in graduate school I was asked a very significant question that has profound consequences—Is man basically born good, neutral or bad? I have since rephrased the question to be, Are we born with a drive to just survive in a struggle to get to the finish line alone through a fierce competitive spirit or are we born with the potential to thrive by creating a cooperative way we can all get to the finish line together as a community with our collective spirit? I’d like to hear from you on this. Your answers will help me.

E-mail Dr Bill: [e-mail]

Dogs come to you when called; cats take a message and get back to you.                         –Mary Bly’s dog. Brief Preface                                             7

-Short Introduction-

"Stop, look & listen, the clues are quite

abound and all around."

–Boo-Dan, age 5.

THE TREASURE HUNT The following is a capsule summary of life. Life is a treasure hunt and we are all born with a tiny piece of the treasure map. When we don’t know we have such a map piece or think what we have is too small or not very valuable compared to what we could have, we usually don’t try to share this information with others. Sometimes we don’t even think about it. What treasure hunt? What piece of the map?

On the other hand, when we think our piece of the treasure map is bigger and better than what others have through some sort of pride—maybe because we are better looking, smarter, more educated, thinner, have more money, are further along in our personal and spiritual journeys, have better jobs, are more important, read certain books, live in a particular part of the world, have more friends or some other form of false self-centred ego anointing—we try to impose our map piece on others, but never with a positive impact. This is often the point where most trouble begins. Neener, Neener, my map piece is bigger than your meager one.

When we finally do figure out how to genuinely share

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our piece of the map with others—humbly, gently, just in time, appropriately, cooperatively, and without any individual side-choosing ulterior motives—our picture of the map gradually gets bigger and we thrive. We learn, grow, improve and become happier, more complete, and more successful in our journey. We do what the renewed human potential movement is all about—going from good to great, from surviving to thriving. We see where we are and where we want to be and how to get there all at the same time. Then we learn to do more sharing, cooperating and keep on growing in the process, enjoying life more— like a spectacularly coloured autumn leaf floating effortlessly and enjoyably down a cool, sparklingly clear river on a warm, sunny day with just enough breeze to keep things moving. Of course there are bumps, bruises and broken bones along the way from downed trees, raging white-water rapids, stop-dead-in-your-tracks shallow water and dauntingly steep and thundering waterfalls. And sometimes it is warm and sunny and sometimes it is freezing cold, rainy and windy. No two days seem to be alike.

Such is life in the literal blink of an eye. Paradoxically, it is your short-term response that defines your long-range consequences in the game of life; and once you realise and accept this reality, much of the unnecessary and annoying uncertainty is removed from your mind, heart and soul. You are on your way to understanding and living the ‘one thing’ Curly and everyone else before and after him were all pointing their finger towards—The Bow-Wow Secrets,

10                                         The Bow-Wow Secrets

written and spoken in many different languages.

Ever since I was a little boy in Haddon Heights, New Jersey, I have thought that dogs were smarter than people in a lot of ways. That is because dogs usually seem to be where they want to be. And if by some strange reason they are not, you don’t hear them whingeing (a great Aussie word) or complaining. They also know what they need to know to be successful and use that knowledge well. Moreover, they don’t waste time bragging to other dogs about everything they know, because they haven’t chosen sides by dividing life into this or that, right or wrong, good or bad. They are too busy practicing the one really important thing they do know—The Bow-Wow Secrets: How to live right, be happy and successful, and share their piece of the treasure map so we can all complete this treasure hunt together.

A recent Danish website had a different version of this impression. Apparently just prior to the terrible tsunami tragedy at Ao Sane Beach, the dogs ran to the hilltops long before the people even realised what was happening. That kind of smart sixth sense saved their lives.

WAR

THE WAR It seems to me that we tend to tip-toe around this issue of a belief in what happens to us when we finish this life on earth. It is way too important not to address head on. After all, eternity can be a very long time! And besides over 85 per cent of the people in the world are believers—there Short Introduction                                          11

must be something to it. If you do believe in continuing on in Heaven, then you try to live your life one way; and if you don’t, you go ahead and live it another way.

The important lesson to all this is that the direction and extent of your belief are closely connected to the quality of life you enjoy. When you persist in fighting symptoms by wilfully competing in the struggle to survive and focus your effort on winning the treasure for yourself, you are not successful, happy or full; when you understand the real problem and cooperate in helping everyone else find and share the treasure, you finally fill the nagging void of incompleteness and deprivation with a thriving, genuine sense of happiness, peace, success and wholeness. That is the single starting rule and total ending outcome—a truth worth considering.

Maybe I am greedy and want it all—my dream has always been to be happy and successful, both here on earth and in Heaven too, forever. I guess that is how I have defined my wholeness and completion. Why not go for the whole kahuna? Why do anything needlessly that will jeopardise tomorrow, which may be much longer than yesterday or today? I am not talking about starving or denying yourself for some illusory benefits of an imaginary future. If in doubt, read Rumours of Another World or any of the other books available on this topic. Heaven is too important to avoid talking about these days. It is the treasure that is waiting for us all and this is the one thing that deserves all our time and effort.

And now we have to talk about a really touchy subject

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that most of us try to avoid on purpose, and we are down to only 75 per cent believers. Okay out with it—the devil or the problem of evil. Call it what you want—even Dr Zymo— but there is a dark side to everything that can keep you from practicing The Bow-Wow Secrets, the Seven Dog Laws, and all the genuine happiness and success that go along with living this good life, no matter how much you believe in these things or want to apply them in getting to where you want to be. This deceivingly subtle but powerful force is all around us and the only real ‘enemy’ any of us have. We are not each other’s enemies but the spiritual warfare that is becoming more obvious today is