How Dogs Climb Ladders

When we first got our dog, Kumo, we taught him all kinds of things, including how to climb a ladder. Most people think a dog will never need to climb a ladder, but our dog was a climbing and skiing dog and, as such, he sometimes climbed ladders. Kumo was never very good at climbing ladders, but he could climb a ladder. The thing about teaching dogs to climb ladders is that they focus only on their front paws and leave their back legs to get dragged up behind them.

I took my nephew climbing on Saturday and he climbed a bit like Kumo when we first taught him to climb ladders. It was all upper body with the feet dragging behind. It is not that my nephew was particularly bad, in fact, he did quite well for someone who has only climbed a couple of times at an indoor gym and never outside. All new climbers spend all their time looking at their hands and worrying about what they are going to grab while all experienced climbers spend most of their time focusing on their feet. As a mountain guide once said to me "climb with the feet and the hands will follow.

Rock climbing, of course, is a skill sport and as such is not necessarily that much fun when your skills are very poor. Like most things in life, you need to find a way to enjoy the process of skill acquisition, which is a fancy way of saying, you better get used to failing. In a world where we increasingly value comfort over all else, the idea of struggling and even failing is an anathema to many and seen as mostly something to avoid.

I am a life long enthusiastic failure and have managed to not succeed at a plethora of different sports. I don't ski very well, nor am I a talented climber, I am a mediocre sea kayaker, and just plain not good at whitewater kayaking. I can manage to pilot my mountain bike around green trails but often fall or wimp out on blue trails, and I run, really quite slowly, but still manage to cover a reasonable distance. But none of that matters because trying and failing is the one of the most important and rewarding things you can do in life. And, after you have failed a hundred times, one day you magically succeed.

If you want to listen to a really good long form podcast about the importance of being wrong, which is really just a different type of failure, go here.