“Our daughter-in-law, Lauren, has a tiny little toy shih tzu dog named Skittles. My wife fell in love with the dog and started asking me to get her one “like Skittles.” Because we have had a big eighty-pound Labrador retriever, Jet, for eight years, the thought of bringing a tiny dog into the house to share space with a well-established “only child” of a dog seemed like a bad idea.

Months of her dropping hints and outright pleading finally took their toll. For Christmas 2005 I gave Janet her own little toy shih tzu, who at 7 weeks old weighed only a pound and a half. She had already told me that if she got a puppy she would name him Sonic because of her affinity for the Sonic drive-in restaurants where she is a regular customer, alternating between cherry limeades and vanilla root beer. I presented Sonic at our staff Christmas party, and brought the little puppy to her in a forty-four-ounce Sonic drink cup. He fit quite comfortably!

The next few months were quite interesting as we watched our well-trained, well-bred, and well-behaved Lab try to figure out what to do with this tiny little creature that he surely thought must have been something other than a dog. Whatever indifference Jet may have shown the little interloper, it didn’t deter Sonic one bit.

From day one Sonic acted as if he, too, were a big dog and whatever Jet did, Sonic tried to do also. Sometimes Sonic would even challenge Jet for a bowl of food or a toy. Jet, being ever the typical, docile, easy-to-please Lab, would often simply walk away rather than engage in a fight with a dog a fraction of the size of the ducks he retreived during hunting season.
As I watched the dogs learn to get along and establish their own space, I was reminded of a truth I had heard years before: “It is not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog that determines the outcome.”
A quality absolutely necessary for leaders to lead and ultimately to win is to display perseverance. The only certain way to lose is to quit before the end of the game. One of the most inspirational speeches I ever heard was given by Clebe McLary, a Marine who had been severely wounded in Vietnam, losing both legs, one arm, and his sight in one eye. It was a miracle enough that he was alive, but a greater miracle was his unquenchable spirit and optimism. I will never forget one statement he made: ‘I have never lost at anything. Sometimes the game ended before I finished playing, but I never lost at anything.’ ”
-taken from FROM HOPE TO HIGHER GROUND, by Gov. Mike Huckabee (p.184-185, Center Street, 2007)..

Mark, you’re the best…I know this probably doesn’t really fit the format and won’t get posted….just thought I’d share the story…..

Thanks,
Boyne from TX