How’s it working for you to not acknowledge your talents and abilities? Do you know that by not acknowledging them, you’re actually doing a disservice to everyone around you? And most importantly, do you know you’re doing a disservice to you?

I’m not talking about skills that one can go to school to cultivate. I’m talking about crazier sh*t that’s hard for your mind to wrap itself around. For example, this morning I was on my morning walk with my gorgeous pups, Radha and Sophia, and here comes a little gorgeous dog, no human in sight, all excited to play with my dogs and come home with me. He had no tags, no chip, and he’s not neutered. How many other people do you think saw this homeless dog and did nothing about it? How many people do you think tried to help this dog only to have him run away? Did I exert any effort to “help” him? No, he just knew that my little family would provide him with what he required, so he followed us.

It would have been easy to overlook this as just something random that happened–except that when I called Rebecca Blackbyrd, animal communicator and longtime friend, for a bit of advice about what to do with the little guy, I said, “Guess what I found this morning? A dog.” And she said, “Of course you did.” And that caused me to look back on the last few years and realize that this is quite a common occurrence, this attracting-of-lost-dogs thing.

In fact, just at the beginning of this summer my dog Sofie appeared to me at 11pm, two houses from mine, surrounded by a leash, skulk, or earth (how I love the internet for quick access to random knowledge!) of hungry foxes. Although it’s only an interesting point of view, I have fun imagining that she appeared out of thin air like the time-traveling husband in The Time Traveler’s Wife. She appeared and thought, “Seriously? I’m surrounded by an earth of foxes? Who writes this stuff? Oh wait, I see car lights, the concerned face of someone who’s going to save me. Perfect, I’ll act like I’m going to bite her face off and see how persistent she is. Oops, here comes some other lady with flashlights and a broom. What’s the broom for?! I’m outta’ here!” [Scene moves to backyard of neighbor’s house where Sofie is now backed into a corner by the lead fox.] “Oh good, this one is persistent. I’ll let her ward off the fox while I continue to play hard-to-get for three minutes. Okay, now, slowly I’ll put my head down and she’ll know she’s clear to pick me up. NASA, we have liftoff! She’s all mine–hook, line, and sinker! People are sooooo easy to manipulate!”

So I attract lost dogs. Great. What does one do with that ability? Luckily I don’t have to have an answer for that right now. I can simply acknowledge that perhaps there’s a talent and ability, a potency, something I’ve not been willing to acknowledge in the past that I’m now ready to acknowledge. I’ll ask lots of questions about it; not make it meaningful or significant, but just notice it and ask a few of my favorite questions: “How does it get any better?” “What else is possible?” and “Can this make me money?”

I joked on Facebook that perhaps I’m part of the universe’s doggie delivery system–friends put in orders for their pups and deliveries come through me. The cool “coincidence” in this case is that a couple of my friends have been in deep discussion about what type of dog to adopt and one of them was actually on the internet researching poodle mixes when she received my text with the picture of this poodle-mix saying, “Want this guy?” She came and got him later in the day and now he might very well have the loving home of his dreams! Here’s to the power of the universe to line things up so that “ask and you shall receive” happens easy-peasy-lemon-squeezily. And how much easier can we make the universe’s job by actually acknowledging the areas in our life (no matter how freakin’ random or bizarre) in which we might have strange abilities?