The Free Radical

(I don’t know why I always pick on Tuesday. For some reason I’ve always regarded Tuesday as the Meg Griffin of weekdays.)

There was an old Polish saying which was shared on AK’s site recently; it said “Not my circus. Not my monkey.” I like that… but…

Sometimes when I’m dog-sitting I end up taking the other dogs along on the forest walk. It makes them very happy, but I usually don’t get in much meditative/contemplative time on such occasions. On this day my throat even got a bit sore because I was constantly yelling at Sitka. Allow me to explain.

Toby is the other dark-coloured one; she’s also six months old and is Sitka’s best friend. They like to play a lot. The mostly white fluffy one is Lhasa. She’s getting older now and is not nearly as enamoured of Sitka’s shenanigans. Sitka goes on these walks every day; the other two, hardly ever. In fact, this is only the second time Toby’s been to the forest in her life. Lhasa and Toby aren’t used to it.

Sitka likes to chase, tackle, wrestle and generally harass the other dogs pretty much continuously. Toby tries to be a good sport about it, but it takes a lot of energy to keep it up for long. We go for long walks, so energy is actually an issue. Therefore, I had to get Sitka to refrain from indulging in these merciless pummellings. It’s hard to teach a puppy that running and chasing is okay, but wrestling is not… so for every tackle thrown I had to consistently yell at Sitka “No! Stop it!” It actually didn’t take her that long to begin to understand what I was getting at. And that– finally– brings me to the point.

I think most loving dog-owners would agree that often you get a sense of having a telepathic rapport with your companion animal. Quite often you know what each other is thinking. As our walk and teaching session progressed, I could clearly see the thought process in action in Sitka. (What I’m talking about here goes along with a recent post about awareness: Message To/From the TOURS #4.)

The general message had gotten through. Sitka “knew” what was expected of her… but remembering to apply that knowledge moment-to-moment was quite the challenge. Throughout the day I would watch when the compulsion to misbehave would grab her and then the moment of awareness would suddenly kick in a split-second before the crushing tackle would be delivered. As time went on, awareness would show up more frequently and consistently, especially when reinforced by an occasional mighty yell from me. This was overall a great lesson in consciousness for both the dog and me. As she continues to develop the ability to call up awareness at will, teaching will become much easier. Now if we could only get more humans to be willing to engage their awareness more consistently!

And then sometimes we meet up with other unexpected adventurers. I’m not totally sure how to spell his name, but this is Keenai. He and I had a battle of wills as he insisted on following Sitka and I toward the river valley. I kept telling him to stop and go back to where his owner was loading firewood into the truck… and it was obvious that he understood exactly what I was saying, as he would trot back twenty meters, wait until we got going again, and then quietly start to follow once we were out of sight. He knew what I wanted; I knew what he wanted; and eventually he won the contest of wills. I had to walk him back to his Dad.

Conclusion: I enjoy observing consciousness and its varied processes in animals. Guess that’s why I issue these reports.