It has been a long summer. When one works outside (with animals or otherwise) seasons matter. Summers are intense. It is the season of endless daylight, high temperatures and a lot of sweating. With that comes the learning and the growing, the sharpening of one’s skills, the pain, the sweat and the tears. Summer was indeed long, but with it came a lot of lessons…
One of them was witnessing so many incredible transformations between dogs and their owners’. Clients that stuck with it, that set an intention and went for it. This is was the summer of hard working dogs and humans. Yet this was also the summer of recognizing how we are all not okay. How tense and disconnected we feel from nature, the outside world, from our instinctual self. We are constantly in fight – flight with everything, experiencing the world as outsiders and feeling reactive instead of connected to it. Our dogs are telling us that. Our dogs are trying their hardest to say to us in a language that we can understand:
Choose peace. Choose joy.
Choose today to start.
The energy out there is intense. Tense x excited. We are living in an age of transition. A renaissance if you will, where everything is moving fast. Speed is that name of the game. With that comes the loss of simply being and experiencing small moments of peace and joy. That walk in the park with no purpose, that moment of just lying down for 10 minutes to breathe and touch grass with our toes. The simple act of sitting outside in the sun. With or without a dog all are lovely experiences, however we have turned them into exercises to be crossed off our to do list without ever allowing ourselves to experience the peace or the joy. We all, collectively, need to slow down. Our dogs are showing us, by the way they are behaving, that we need to stop, take a deep, deep breath and choose to be joyful when we are confronted with our own fight – flight instincts. We humans, different from dogs, can actually choose the state of mind we are in. How amazing is that? This is where our dogs can help us in achieving a lighter state of mind even when confronted with all that is going on around us.
Understanding that how we are relating to the world is matter of choice, does not make the task of committing to peace and joy any easier. The practice comes in remembering that besides saying the words, action must follow. Intention without action are just words. That was the test for me during this time. How do I remain calm when everything around me is anything but? How to let go of the expectations of trying to fit a million things in a given day in order to finish my to do list? That is where the preparation and consistency come in. When working with dogs the first rule of thumb is intention. “What do I hope to achieve from this interaction”. Secondly, what is my energy? Meaning how do I feel right now about all this? This is when the choice comes in. Then the actual conversation with the dog can begin. What we fail to realize is that 90% of the time we are not present when that conversation starts. The dog senses that the human is in a state of fight – flight – avoidance and starts imitating it. Since we have all been living in a continuous state of flight -fight (thinking about what we failed to while planning for what we need to do) or avoidance (doom scrolling our phones, anxious about the enormity of changes in technology and ways of life) our dogs really do not know any other state of mind to live in.
Here is where the silver lining comes in. Our dogs can actually help us regulate how we are interacting with the world if we simply start being present when working with them. If we take 10 to 15 minutes everyday to simply be, sharing space with our dogs and repeating the mantra “I choose peace, I choose joy” we can see in real time how that helps both us and our pups to be present in a state of surrender. To take deep breaths and come back to now. To the present, to realize that we get to choose how we relate to world. Our dogs will start imitating our energy during this tiny ritual and will experience a human that is, at least for those brief moments, in a state of surrender. That will go a long way in starting to shape both of our conducts into something more manageable and more enjoyable. Dogs imitate behaviors. That is how they learn. What they are imitating right now is our collective tension and excitement. If we give them (and us) and opportunity to enjoy a different state of mind we will grow together.
One of the most delightful parts of being human is that we get to choose, at any given moment, how we react and engage with the world around us. The operative word being choice. So next time you want to start working with your dog, set a mantra of I choose… you are in the driver seat, with your dog being your copilot. If you choose peace and joy, your dog will follow your lead. Conversely, if you have a bad or stressful day, when you come home, sit down with your dog and try to be still, in the present moment. Put your self in the role of the observer and witness how dogs invariably find the peace and/or joy in most of their interactions with their pack. They will simply lie down peacefully and surrender to whatever is going on or bring a toy or some sort if invitation to play to lighten the mood. Choosing joy, choosing peace takes commitment, let’s start these practices by slowing down and experiencing these flashes of surrender with our dogs. We all need them.
Happy Training!
