Leashes and Lovers - What Your Dog Can Teach You About Love, Life, and Happiness. Sheryl Matthys
Читать онлайн книгу.
dogs, it’s not so much what you say as what you hear.
2. Hand over your leash: It’s about control, and it’s time to hand over your leash. Relinquish your role as the omnipotent, all-knowing, all-seeing guide, and start following more than you lead. Stop trying to be “in control” of everything and everyone in your life, and realize that the tighter you clutch, the less control you actually have, and the more likely things will spiral “out of control.” This can be hard for most of us; we’re taught that being in control is our natural state and part of being a responsible adult. But heed this lesson from your dog: It’s great to be part of a holistic pack! Especially when you have learned to speak the language.
3. Recognize the building blocks of communication: Humility, intimacy, playfulness, trust, loyalty, and companionship. These are what I consider to be the six building blocks of communication. In the next chapter, we’ll explore each value and learn what your dog can teach you about each one. Why is communication so important? Simple: communication affects every relationship you have. It’s the glue that binds people together or the knife that severs the connection; so the more effective you are at communicating with others, the more successful your relationships will be.
4. “Settle” yourself and embrace the sounds of silence: In this book I have provided some simple exercises to help you enter your dog’s world and understand, enjoy, and embrace the sounds of silence, like learning to meditate to awaken you to your inner being. Now, this doesn’t mean your dog will become “the quiet type” overnight; far from it. Dogs, like people, are either hardwired for sound or born to be mellow (good luck with changing their nature!). No, the kind of silence I’m talking about is that which you experience when fully communicating with your dog on a deeper, more meaningful level. Stop barking orders and get face-to-face with how your dog really communicates: one emotion, one situation at a time. As in meditation and prayer, listen past your own voice and the clutter in your mind to hear the answers to your dilemmas.
Handing Over Your Leash: When the Teacher Becomes the Student
Why am I so hung up on handing over your metaphorical leash? Simple: your leash is a symbol of who is leading whom. Unless you’re a hundred-pound model walking a 180-pound English Mastiff, you are leading your dog. Which is as it should be, in a literal sense. And while for some of you, your dogs do physically pull or drag you, that’s a training/behavioral issue, and not what I’m addressing here.
Emotionally, we tend to guide our dogs rather than the other way around, just as when we get back inside the house and unclasp the leash we still feel that leader-to-follower connection that blocks us from learning.
Sometimes the teacher can benefit from becoming the student, and you can start right now simply by admitting that you don’t know everything there is to know about relationships and communication. Open your mind to the prospect that your dog may actually be able to teach you a few lessons. He can help you free your “inner dog” to feel, experience, and enjoy life like never before – like a dog does. But, you may be thinking, isn’t it a stretch to believe that a creature who can’t technically speak can experience, understand, and interpret human emotion and teach us something about communicating?
Well, babies can’t speak either, and yet we know they experience, understand, and interpret human emotion. Don’t they cry and fidget when angry and upset? Don’t they cuddle and coo when we’re being affectionate and attentive? Don’t their eyes, faces and even their little hands express a wide range of human emotions? Haven’t there been reams of research done on how much they understand, both in and out of the womb?
Are dogs so different? Dogs show:
•Submission, by rolling onto their back and licking at the mouth of another dog
•Affection, by nuzzling, wagging a lowered tail and/or angling their ears back and relaxing
•Aggression, by angling their ears forward, raising their hackles up, a raised, stiff tail, and/or a wrinkled nose
•Pain, by yelping
•Defensive fear, through a lowered, stiff body posture, dilated pupils, and/or a tucked tail
...just to name a few.
Yet it’s even simpler than that for those of us on two legs instead of four. How do we humans communicate? We speak to one another. We shouldn’t have to second guess or figure out or decipher what other human beings are saying to us. Ideally, we simply let them speak and hear what they have to say. But how often do we really say what we mean to one another? We mask what we may truly be feeling or would truthfully like to say behind our words.
Dogs don’t hide anything. Dogs don’t rationalize. Just like children, they are direct in what they do and need and feel. They are honest to the core about their needs, wants, and desires; they know no other way. Yes, we are a more socialized being, acting properly in social situations and not biting or growling when someone or something is bothering us. But we’re a long way from living honestly. We argue with a spouse over whose turn it is to take out the garbage or about spending money we don’t have, when we both know those are symptoms of a bigger problem. It’s usually what we’re not mentioning and what we’re not listening to that is the crux of the matter. Often we over-rationalize.
How do we achieve a more dog-like honesty? It’s a matter of simplifying life and finding the truth within us. Before responding to a situation with a knee jerk reaction, stop and think about how the serene dog would react to the matter at hand. What would your dog do? Probably not overreact, but rather react to the extent that the situation calls for – nothing more, nothing less.
Dogs “read” our emotions, our tears and fears, our anger and hurt, through our body language. Aside from a limited number of words and commands, they can’t understand what we say. To communicate, they must translate our body language into how we think, feel, and emote. There is no “Easy” button for our dogs; they have to communicate with us with two senses tied behind their backs: speaking and hearing (understanding) our language.
Elizabeth Ross knows this only too well, which is why she founded DoggedHealth.com as a resource for empowering dog owners to make educated health and wellness decisions for their dogs. Elizabeth says, “Dogs, unlike our human relatives or other loved ones, cannot speak to us to let us know what is wrong. They cannot say if it hurts, where it hurts, or what they need us to do.”
It’s a completely one-sided relationship, but it doesn’t have to be. And once your relationship with your dog becomes a more balanced one, with you listening as much as your dog does, doors will open for you to stronger human relationships. We can learn to read cues as a dog does. We can learn to stop relying so much on the words people say to us, and instead see through their words, read between the lines, and get to what they’re really saying.
Brian Hare, of Harvard University, once said, “Dogs have a talent for reading social cues in a very sophisticated way.” Perhaps that explains why many people feel completely comfortable bringing their dogs into social situations in which they might not feel comfortable alone.
I met Wendy and her dog at a Leashes and Lovers party (dogs are welcome) at a bar.
“Did you come by yourself?” I asked.
“I did,” confessed Wendy.
“Would it have been difficult for you without your dog by your side?”
“Yes,” Wendy agreed. “When I have my dog, it makes it much easier for me... guys want to talk to you, and girls want to know where you got your dog’s sweater...” And with her dog as her guide, she can listen “behind the words” for the truth in others’ intentions.
Remember, this is not just about slowing down and communicating