Articles

Dumb Dog!

I talk a lot about my dog Annie. She’s a seven year old German Shepherd and she is one of the great loves of my life. She is the sweetest creature. Full of fun, boisterous, incredibly loving and unbelievably smart. Too smart at times. I could swear she understand every word we say.  She is also acutely sensitive. In the years she has been in my life, she has taught me so much.

Occasionally though, and usually because of other stuff going on with me, I lose my temper with her. I snap, tell her she’s a bad dog and instruct her to go to bed. What happens next is both hilarious and heart breaking.

She is never quite sure what she has done wrong, but she understands that momma is mad, and she wants to make it better. She instantly starts cycling through her repertoire of tricks. Sitting, giving first one paw and then the other. Bestowing kisses, lying down and then going back to sitting. She will repeat this sequence, hoping to hit on the one that will make everything alright. She will only stop when I tell her she’s a good girl, give her a cuddle and let her know momma’s not mad anymore.

The funniest part of this, is that I have realised lately I do the exact same thing. When I go into a situation where there’s an atmosphere, I am compelled to try to fix it. When I am in contact with someone in a bad mood, I have an unquenchable desire to try to make them feel better.

Most of the time, this has the exact opposite affect. We all know there’s nothing more annoying than someone trying to cheer us up when we just want to work through whatever is going on by ourselves. Preferably in silence.

On a rational level I understand this, but some old instinct kicks in and makes me feel unsafe. The negative energy charges the room with a sense of the unpredictable and I am never quite able to relax. In short, I have the emotional intelligence of my dog!

A lot of us grow up pleasing and perfecting. Collecting gold stars and praise for being a good little girl. For being sweet. We perform to make others happy, finding safety in their smiles. Most of us grow out of this behaviour in adolescence. I seem to have skipped over that step.

I am deep into my third decade on this planet and I still have this innate desire to smooth everything over. As often as I tell myself your mood is nothing to do with me, I will still try to “fix” it. As much as I know your silence and withdrawal could have a million motivations, I will still find a way to take it personally. I will sit, give the paw and roll over until such time as I feel like order has been restored.

The irony is, doing so will most likely alienate you or make you think I am a crazy lady.

There is great power in self awareness. Now that I know I do this, I can try to stop myself from diving head first into every drama I encounter. Other peoples’ moods are none of my business and I am certainly not responsible for altering them. This is going to require a herculean effort on my part, because just sitting in the discomfort, without trying to do something about it is completely alien to me.

Just like Annie, I am too sensitive for my own good. Getting a thicker skin is most likely not going to happen at this stage, but I can stop putting my hand out to be slapped. I can stop taking on the problems of the world as if they were my own.

Let’s hope I can pick up new tricks just as easily as Annie can. Be well xxx

 

Articles

Donegal Revisited

Some of you might remember that last year I was in Donegal, with my husband and our German Shepherd, Annie.  We had an amazing time.  So good, in fact, that we booked the same house for the same week this year.  I couldn’t wait to get back there.  I spent the weeks running up to it day dreaming about all the lovely, long walks we would take, and reminiscing about the bright blue skies we had had.  I found myself buying the same wine we had last year, and planning to hit up the same eateries.  I was essentially trying to recreate what had been a truly fabulous few days.

I should know better.  I should know by now that when you try to recreate an experience it never really works out.  It’s like when you have a great meal in a restaurant, and when you go back the chef is out sick and you end up with cold beans on toast!  I am so familiar with this recreation disappointment that I normally try to avoid encountering it.  However, where Donegal was concerned we decided to take the risk, and I am glad we did.

We loaded up the car, popped the puppy (all 40kgs of her) into the back seat and off we went.  With a stop for a bite of lunch, the drive took about 6 hours.  We arrived in the early evening and got settled in right away.  We sent out for pizza, the same one we’d had last year, naturally, and set about the serious business of relaxing.  Annie was so much more chilled out this time.  Last year she insisted on walking backwards around the place for the first day or two.  There was no moon walking this time and she seemed right at home.

The next day, in much the same fashion as last year, we set out for a long walk along the beach.  The humans hit 10,000 steps with ease, and the dog must have clocked up about 50,000!  She even had a little tussle with another dog at one stage.  When we got back to the house we were all worn out but happy.  It’s amazing the restorative effect the sea air can have on the soul.  That night, however, we noticed that Annie was limping a little.  She had no doubt overdone it, so we resigned ourselves to taking it a little easier.

As it happened, the weather was pretty miserable for the rest of our stay, so were we not anywhere near as active as we had been last year.  Initially I was a bit upset about it.  This wasn’t the plan.  I wanted to whine about how it wasn’t “the same,” but I didn’t.  I decided to re-frame it.  If I spent all my time thinking about what the trip wasn’t, I would be missing out on what it was.  I won’t be getting another break for ages and I didn’t want to waste it, even if it wasn’t going exactly to plan.  Just because it wasn’t the same, didn’t mean it couldn’t be great.  In the end, it turned out to be just what we needed.  A few quiet days away to rest and spend some quality time with our furry baby.

I am sure we all have a tendency to succumb to this way of thinking.  Our plan hasn’t worked out exactly as we wanted it to, so it’s all ruined.  We get so caught up with chasing the fantasy, that we risk throwing the baby out with the bath water.  Sometimes, as Ryan Holiday says in his brilliant book, “The Obstacle is The Way.”

I will give you an example.  My sister and I started recording a Podcast a few weeks back.  My younger brother is acting as producer, editor and general “making it all happen guy.”  None of us have a notion of what we are doing, but when has that ever stopped me!  We were pretty happy with how the first few episodes went, but there was an issue with the sound, that we couldn’t quite get to the bottom of.  It was really irritating, as it was making the Podcast seem less polished than we wanted.  We sat down last week to record and my poor brother’s computer decided to have a complete melt down.  No amount of ctrl+alt+delete could persuade it to cooperate.

Eventually we decided to fly up to my sister’s house and get her computer to use instead.  Of course her machine didn’t have the software we had been using, and we when tried to install it, we got nowhere.  At this stage we were all getting tired and more than a little frustrated.  We managed to find different software, downloaded it and praise the seven, it actually worked!  What’s more, we didn’t have the issues with the sound anymore.

The problem had been with the software all along, but of course we just assumed it was something we were doing wrong due to our lack of expertise.  If we hadn’t had the computer malfunction, we might never have figured it out.  What seemed like a complete disaster at the time, ended up being a big help.  Proving that good can come from just about any situation if you allow yourself to be open to it.  Be well xxx