Perseverance

Perseverance.
What is perseverance?
According to Webster it's the continued effort to do or achieve something despite difficulties, failures,  or opposition.

It took perseverance the other night when trying to puppy proof our backyard.
See, we brought home an 8-week-old basset hound the week before school started.

Fillmore is your typical puppy.
He loves to chase his tail,
and run...subsequently stepping on his long ears and thus sent into a spiraling tumble,
playing with our boys and neighbor kids,
and since he's a basset, he loves to sleep!

At this age, though, I don't think Fillmore truly believes he's a basset.
Bassets are low to the ground and actually quite clumsy.
Basically, not the most graceful.
However...
One evening, we found him flung over the top of the dog run as he had somehow managed to climb on top his LARGE crate and somehow flop his body then over the two foot section of fencing still above him.
He also is not afraid of heights apparently
As we've seen him scamper up the ramp to the fort and enjoy the sights of neighborhood from 5 feet off the ground instead of his normal 10 inches.

This is where perseverance comes into the story.
From both his perspective and ours.
With going back to school, I knew we needed to make the backyard safe for him.  I couldn't have him hurling himself off the fort!  With my husband, the handyman out of town, I was going to have to solve this by myself!  Looking around the backyard, I decided to employ all the patio chairs and carefully and strategically placed them along and around the ramp.  Problem solved!
Later I saw Mr. Invincible scampering and scrambling his way up and over all those chairs.  Oh no!  This would never do!

Time for strategy #2!  Wanting Fillmore to have the run of the backyard, I thought I could employ the dog run to simply block the ramp.  Alas, the length of the gate was too long and provided a hole for my ever curious pup to find.

Strategy #3 was my son's idea (it's always best to employ more brains than just one when solving problems).  He suggested we place the dog run so the entire ramp was inside.  Perfect idea!  We had to use some muscles to lift the ramp out from where the grass had grown into it, but in no time at all, we had the entire ramp inside the dog run.  Without missing a beat, Fillmore ran under the ramp, found a little space, squeezed through and heroically ran up the ramp right in front of our amazed eyes!

Time for strategy #4, which ended up involving power tools.  With the waning light, this strategy proved to be a longer process than we had sunlight.

Finally, we had to look at our priorities...keeping the little guy safe.  We had one option left for the next morning, simply put him in the dog run with the crate in the MIDDLE.

During this whole process,
Lots of brainstorming and creative thinking was taking place.
One of us would suggest an idea
And then we'd quickly critique it as to whether it would work.
Some we tried out.
Others we simply discounted.

So, how does math fit into all of this?
Finding solutions to math problems is exactly the same to finding solutions to those problems that hit us in everyday life.
The first strategy we try may not work out.
Neither may the second one.
It may take quite a few tries before we come across something that works.
However, it's perseverance that allows us to keep thinking of new, innovative ways until we finally find something that works.