Category: dogs

  • Guilt Dog, You’re Free to Go

    Guilt Dog, You’re Free to Go

    Today, I am thinking about releasing guilt and making boundaries.

    Guilt Needs Some Boundaries Too

    Time to think about boundaries, about making boundaries for the surging misbehaving guilt that leaps and nips at me.

    It would, given the chance, sink its teeth right in and not let go. It would, if I let it, tear my seams and bedraggle my hems.

    I think about the Tibetan Mastiffs I met yesterday. One was much smaller than the other (although still large. Very large.) and he wanted to prove his strength against the world of me and my tote bag.  Nibble. Tug. Nibble. Attention finally caught, I looked down at his enormous jaws.

    “Szzt,” and a snap of my fingers stopped him, surprised. More importantly: a shut door in my mind between his naughtiness and my tote. His people make no effort to restrain him. Instead, they chuckle and tell me how he tore open their friend’s jeans. 

    Indeed.

    Guilt is like a big unruly dog who loves you

    I find myself wondering, again, why it is that people invite big dogs into the family but do not think it necessary to acquaint them with the rules, to teach them where the boundaries are.

    And immediately, I see this giant’s lesson for me, the lesson he held in his drooly teeth when he reached through my debilitated, feeble boundary and nibbled my tote bag.

    I will remember this mastiff monkey-monster, and I will call him Guilt.

    Yes, Guilt, I’m talking to you. No more tugs on the corners of my soft, struggling new peace; no more nibbles along my almost-fraying edges.

    I understand that you have things to tell me, are afraid I haven’t heard the things you tell me. I see your worried eyes following me and your wanting paw upraised. Thank you, but it’s okay. I heard you. It’s time for you to go chase squirrels, Guilt. 

    Go on.

    And shame is the sheep your guilt dog herds!

    You’ve done your job, you’ve herded my scattered shame-sheep and brought them out from all their dark mountain caves and hiding spots. I see them, and I speak their sorry names out loud.

    [Oh, hello, reader. Join me, if you like. Brene Brown is so right. When you speak Shame’s name, it loses its imposter power.]

    So here’s a name for one of my sheep (see the one over there, covering under all her ratty wool?): 

    I was not the good and loving mother you think. I was probably a terrible mother.

    And here’s how I will rename my ratty sheep and fluff her wool:

    I was, however, the best that I could be then, in that place and time, scrabbling for a hold on the greasy sides of the pit he dug for me with his sharp-edged shovel of disparagement and discounting.

    Guilt, you panting, overgrown, teething puppy, you brought us together, my shoddy sheep and I. Now, take them away.

    I’m ready to stop shearing their tiresome, bulky fleece. I’m ready to stop endlessly carding, hopelessly spinning; I’m ready to stop wearing their rough, itchy wool. There’s much better wool on the Sheep of Honour Myself. I’m off to knit a shawl.

    [Featured Image by Lydia Wang from Pixabay]

  • When It’s All Too Much: One More Walk With The Dog

    This one was a difficult one to write, and it’s full of that tricky word, I. That’s because it’s also full of that tricky activity of peering into I to see what’s up in the darkness.

    I’ve been thinking about preparedness. I missed something important in my dog-walking lesson. This is what I missed:

    Sometimes, now and then, my expectations outdo my readiness, and sometimes they take me in a not-so-good direction.

    (You know what they say about expectations, right? No? Here: An expectation is a premeditated resentment.)

    “Being prepared for life means living the kind of life where the things that I am preparing for don’t need preparation. I don’t always know what will happen or what other people will do, but I can choose to always know what I will do.”

    The something important that I missed is the foundation of all the rest. Guess what? I don’t always know what I will do. I only know who I will be.

    presence-615646_960_720

    The peace – presence – power paradigm I wandered into a few weeks back is real, but now I’ve discovered something new about it. It only really comes true when I let go of expectations and let myself rest in absolute acceptance of who I am, where I am, when I am. When I reach that place, what I do doesn’t matter so much. I know it will be okay, whatever it is, so long as I’m okay with me.

    It turns out that in the strange meeting where I expected to be businesslike and professional, I had unbusinesslike things to say, unprofessional pain to express, fair criticism to communicate, and tears to cry.  So that, all of that, is what  I did.

    I thought, before I went to the meeting, that the magical three Ps (peace, presence, power) were direct routes to fulfilling my expectations: I expected to say important things with untouchable and frightening detachment. I was going to be unbreakable, unshakable. I was going to teach them a thing or two.

    Instead, I found a voice I didn’t know I had and strength to let tears come along. I cried from beginning to end (soft tears running from my eyes), but my heart was untroubled. My tears, my friend said later, were there to clean up and carry away my weakness.

    I like that.

    tears flow

    I let my weakness fall away with my tears, and I said important things with honesty, clarity, and a vulnerability that I would never have planned in my quest for superwoman. My walking-the-dog self stepped aside, lifted the mist, let me speak and held my hand so that my steady voice said everything that had to be said. Steady and soft, but I felt the floorboards tremble as my words sank slowly to the ground.

    My weakness wasn’t my inability to be an unreal, unblinking woman of steel. My weakness was my determination to be someone I’m not.

    Be yourself

    There may have been lessons learned by the others in that room. That doesn’t matter to me. The important thing is that I learned. For one thing, I let go of my expectation that I will act the part of a person I’m not. I don’t want to pretend that tears are weakness. I don’t want to pretend that professionalism precludes personhood.

    I do want to walk the dog again.

  • Peace, Presence, Power: Walking The Dog Again

    I’m still thinking about the dog walking. “Now to carry Dog’s lessons when she isn’t there at the end of the leash to keep track of my mind.” Exactly. It’s so much easier when the dog is there beside me.

    I know what to do, but without that waiting, eager being at the end of the leash, I forget. I still behave as if I think that Be Prepared means Expect the Worst. Stay Alert to all the ways things could go wrong. Watch for Trouble. Gird your loins.

    “Breathe. Sink into each step and be here with the earth, pacing her heartbeat into my own. Let that steady, slow, peace fill me…There is only this moment, this breath, this meditative footstep, and beside me, her toenails clicking,” I wrote.

    Peace and presence bring power, but if I want to be present in peace, then loin-girding and tensing my muscles to spring isn’t the way to go. That kind of preparation doesn’t work. Not in our urban jungle life today, and not, I suspect, all that well for the pre-historic hunter either. It certainly doesn’t work for me. It takes calm, centred awareness to survive in jungles.  

    presence-615646_960_720

    The dog taught me how to calm the moment. If I pay attention, I can see that she has another lesson for me. She is always in each moment. She doesn’t carry any burden with her from play to sleep to eat to walk.

    Me, on the other hand, I had to breathe and focus through every step of our walk because my worries bounced on the end of my toes and clamored for my attention. I can’t blame them. I invited them along.

    I found myself thinking about a poster my pilot brother had on his wall when he started flying lessons. 

    “A superior pilot uses his superior judgment to avoid situations that would require the use of his superior skills.” – Frank Borman

    Ahh. I see.

    Being prepared for life means living the kind of life where the things that I am preparing for don’t need preparation. I don’t always know what will happen or what other people will do, but I can choose to always know what I will do.

    I’m about to go to a meeting. I have some seriously negative expectations about that meeting. I think I’ll let them fly away, bounce from the end of my toes into the sunny air as I walk through trees and sidewalk patios and summer downtown on my way there.

    I’m prepared, peaceful, present, and powerful. I know what I will do.

  • Walking the Dog: Why the leash in my hand guides me more than the dog

    I don’t have a dog in my life. I used to, but he went with everything else in the divorce. So when  I got to take my friend’s poodle for walks while they were away, I remembered why I loved taking my huge white Pyrenees out for long, long, rambles around the city. And I learned some things too.

    Dogs feel every tiny shift in the person attached to the other end of a leash. They feel you noticing the bicycle, the jogger, the squirrel, and they feel you worrying about it. If you are worried, they are worried, although they don’t know why. And that makes it even worse.

    sabre great pyrenees

    Dogs are entirely present all the time. They don’t understand our proclivity for absence.

    They know when you are away from yourself. They feel your mind scuttling between tomorrow, yesterday, your problems at work, your problems at home, and all the other foolish places our thoughts go when we let them.

    Dogs know when you aren’t here and now, and that worries them. If you aren’t here and now, where are you and how do they do their dogly duty sticking with you in a place that doesn’t exist?

    It seemed to me and my distracted, anxious brain that the dog was unstoppable in her frenzied desire to jump on cyclists, chase rabbits, leap in horror at ducks, and hurl herself and her lolling tongue at potential petters.

    When I saw a bicycle coming, I prepared myself.  When I spotted a rabbit, I girded my loins. Watch out. Be ready. Hold on

    So the dog said, okay. I get it. I feel you tingling right through the lease and into my skin. You want turmoil? Can do.

    And then I remembered.

    I paid attention to the knotted set of my shoulders, the hardness in my hands, and most of all, my leaping, sizzling thoughts. Breathe. Sink into each step and be here with the earth, pacing her heartbeat into my own. Let that steady, slow, peace fill me and pour down the leash to the listening dog.

    There is only this moment, this breath, this meditative footstep, and beside me, her toenails clicking.

    The next cyclist passed without a flicker of an ear.

    Now to carry Dog’s lessons when she isn’t there at the end of the leash to keep track of my mind.