He must labour to make us loveable

 In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious & less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less.

Another type is the love of a man for a beast -- a relation constantly used in Scripture to symbolise the relation between God & men; "we are His people & the sheep of His pasture." This is in some ways a better analogy than the preceding, because the inferior party is sentient, & yet unmistakably inferior: but it is less good in so far as man has not made the beast & does not fully understand it. Its great merit lies in the fact that the association of (say) man & dog is primarily for the man's sake: he tames the dog primarily that he may love it, not that it may love him, & that it may serve him, not that he may serve it. Yet at the same time, the dog's interests are not sacrificed to the man's. The one end (that he may love it) cannot be fully attained unless it also, in its fashion, loves him, nor can it serve him unless he, in a different fashion, serves it. Now just because the dog is by human standards one of the "best" of irrational creatures, & a proper object for a man to love -- of course, with that degree & kind of love which is proper to such an object, & not with silly anthropomorphic exaggerations -- man interferes with the dog & makes it more lovable than it was in mere nature. In its state of nature it has a smell, & habits which frustrate man's love: he washes it, house-trains it, teaches it not to steal; & is so enabled to love it completely. To the puppy the whole proceeding would seem, if it were a theologian, to cast grave doubts on the "goodness" of man: but the full-grown & full-trained dog, larger, healthier, & longer-lived than the wild dog, & admitted, as it were by Grace, to a whole world of affections, loyalties, interests, & comforts entirely beyond its animal destiny, would have no such doubts. It will be noted that the man (I am speaking throughout of the good man) takes all these pains with the dog, & gives all these pains to the dog, only because it is an animal high in the scale -- because it is so nearly lovable that it is worth his while to make it fully lovable. He does not house-train the earwig or give baths to centipedes. We may wish, indeed, that we were of so little account to God that He left us alone to follow our natural impulses -- that He would give over trying to train us into something so unlike our natural selves: but once again, we are asking not for more Love, but for less.
Excerpted from Problem of Pain, C S Lewis

THE BEST OF IRRATIONAL CREATURES

Another type is the love of a man for a beast—a relation constantly used in Scripture to symbolize the relation between God and men; “we are his people and the sheep of his pasture”. This is in some ways a better analogy than the preceding, because the inferior party is sentient, and yet unmistakably inferior: but it is less good in so far as man has not made the beast and does not fully understand it. Its great merit lies in the fact that the association of (say) man and dog is primarily for the man’s sake: he tames the dog primarily that he may love it, not that it may love him, and that it may serve him, not that he may serve it. Yet at the same time, the dog’s interests are not sacrificed to the man’s. The one end (that he may love it) cannot be fully attained unless it also, in its fashion,

loves him, nor can it serve him unless he, in a different fashion, serves it. Now just because the dog is by human standards one of the “best” of irrational creatures, and a proper object for a man to love—of course, with that degree and kind of love which is proper to such an object, and not with silly anthropomorphic exaggerations—man interferes with the dog and makes it more lovable than it was in mere nature. In its state of nature it has a smell, and habits, which frustrate man’s love: he washes it, house-trains it, teaches it not to steal, and is so enabled to love it completely. To the puppy the whole proceeding would seem, if it were a theologian, to cast grave doubts on the “goodness” of man: but the full-grown and full-trained dog, larger, healthier, and longer-lived than the wild dog, and admitted, as it were by Grace, to a whole world of affections, loyalties, interests, and comforts entirely beyond its animal destiny, would have no such doubts. It will be noted that the man (I am speaking throughout of the good man) takes all these pains with the dog, and gives all these pains to the dog, only because it is an animal high in the scale—because it is so nearly lovable that it is worth his while to make it fully lovable. He does not house-train the earwig or give baths to centipedes. We may wish, indeed, that we were of so little account to God that He left us alone to follow our natural impulses—that He would give over trying to train us into something so unlike our natural selves: but once again, we are asking not for more Love, but for less.

The Problem of Pain -- C S Lewis 1940

C S Lewis Institute website

My dear dog, if by your will you mean what you really want to do...

Supposing you are taking a dog on a lead through a turnstile or past a post: You know what happens (apart from his usual ceremonies in passing a post!). He tries to go the wrong side and gets his lead [leash] looped round the post. You see that he can’t do it, and therefore pull him back. You pull him back because you want to enable him to go forward. He wants exactly the same thing—namely to go forward: for that very reason he resists your pull back, or, if he is an obedient dog, yields to it reluctantly as a matter of duty which seems to him to be quite in opposition to his own will: though in fact it is only by yielding to you that he will ever succeed in getting where he wants.

Now if the dog were a theologian he would regard his own will as a sin to which he was tempted, and therefore an evil: and he might go on to ask whether you understand and ‘contained’ his evil. If he did you could only reply ‘My dear dog, if by your will you mean what you really want to do, viz. to get forward along the road, I not only understand this desire but share it. Forward is exactly where I want you to go. If by your will, on the other hand, you mean your will to pull against the collar and try to force yourself forward in a direction which is no use—why I understand it of course: but just because I understand it (and the whole situation, which you don’t understand) I cannot possibly share it. In fact the more I sympathize with your real wish—that is, the wish to get on—the less can I sympathize (in the sense of ‘share’ or ‘agree with’) your resistance to the collar: for I see that this is actually rendering the attainment of your real wish impossible.’

Yours, Jack -- Letters of C S Lewis