We seem to think it’s up to us to teach our dogs everything. I get questions all the time along the lines of “How can I make my dog do such-and-such?” “How can I stop my dog doing xyz?”
But how about looking at what our dogs can teach us?
One of the greatest realisations in my time on this planet is that
It’s not about us!
We see things through our own individual set of goggles. And those goggles have very smeary, scratched lenses!
They’ve been smeared and scratched by years and years of our life experiences, what we’ve been taught, what’s acceptable in our society, how we think we ought to behave.
Often we have felt that life is happening to us, without us being able to do a thing about it. We may have accepted everything we’ve been told or taught without question.
Where is the truth?
But, you know, the only thing you can be sure of, can trust, can know is truth, is your own reaction. Your own thought. Your own feeling.
For some of us, even those spontaneous thoughts have been crushed and buried because we thought they didn’t fit in with what we’re meant to think. It can take a little digging to find out what your true values and feelings are. We can cast aside the interpretations we put on the things that happen, we can stop meeting trouble halfway by our assumptions,
And this is where your dog comes in.
Our teacher - our dog!
When did he last read the paper, watch the news? When did he last ruminate over what someone said, asking himself endless questions, whywhywhy? Does he worry whether he is good enough?
(I’m talking here, of course, of the companion dogs in our homes, who are being given the Five Freedoms.)
Dogs are truly spontaneous - when we allow them to be so. They experience something, and they react. Or respond. Or ignore.
They don’t analyse it. They don’t ask endless questions - “Why did she look at me like that?” “What can he be meaning?” “Is it something I said?”
They just experience - and react.
So, as dogs live entirely in the present, this keeps their lives comparatively simple. For example, they see something new on the ground:
“Can I eat it?”
“Can I climb on it?”
“Will I roll in it?”
“I’ll pass by …”
Nowhere do they say,
“What is the meaning of this thing?”
“Is this to do with what happened last week?”
“This means the world as we know it will disappear.”
“Why do these things always happen to me?”
Listen and learn from our dogs
So how about taking a leaf out of their book? When something happens, take it at face value. No need to let your imagination run riot when something goes slightly amiss, “This means the end of everything I value!” or “I will end up dead in a ditch!”
As Confucius apparently said, “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
Uncomplicate yourself. Be a dog. Live in the now.
And if you’d like to learn just how you can approach your life with pleasure and not trepidation, just ask me!
