Mental Musings

When I was a very small child, I had a moment where I was 1) frustrated and 2) wondered what causing harm would feel like. The family dog was an established part of our life by then and I without rhyme or reason, kicked him. I'm sure I had some 5 year olds' excuse, but did that matter to the dog? No. Immediately I felt huge, profound remorse for my misdeed and though the dog forgave me, I have never forgotten that moment or the deep depth of pure "wrongness" that I experienced. I have never laid an ill-minded hand on another creature since. There is no need to do so unless maybe if the animal is actively chewing your limbs off.

So, why do we think it's okay to put prong and choke collars on our dogs or use hard-handed tactics and label it "dominance training"? How is that different from kicking them? I meditated over this article while in the shower this morning and low and behold while at work I was steered towards a similar article on the web! The Universe is yelling at us about the importance of opening our umbrella of knowledge, there's new stuff to catch! Check this out, it is a poignant read: http://lifeasahuman.com/2011/pets/blunt-force-trauma-canine-reality/

Now, I'll not claim to be "above" such human behavior. I am human, after all. I've taught obedience for many years and I have advocated the use of prong collars. I have advocated being "dominant". Best of all, I have grown beyond this way of being since those times and no longer own prong or choke collars, nor advocate their use. There are better, kinder ways to share our lives with our furry friends and much better kinder ways of helping them be in our world in a manner that is suitable to our own selves. The ground work in TTouch helps teach balance so a dog learns to walk more freely and without needless pulling. No prongs. No chokes. No sudden direction changes. No stopping suddenly while the dog wonders why. The dog simply learns how to do it correctly by doing it correctly. We don't learn to drive cars by being yanked around and corrected for every faux pas, so why should we say it's okay to teach an animal who possess less conscious reasoning ability than ours in a manner that makes no sense to them? We admit we don't have their sense of smell, so why do we expect them to have our level of consciousness?

Dogs have amazing abilities, many of which reach way beyond our human scope of understanding. Have you tried mental thoughts with your dog yet to see what happens? It takes discipline much like meditation to clear your mind of the static and send clear messages to the dog, but you'd be surprised at what they receive. Ditch the prongs and chokes and scare tactics, silly human. These divine creatures deserve more from us than that.

Next round... analysis of the game show buzzer.

Peace

Brenna & her cat, Beau
RIP

An "Aha" Moment

I love it when the umbrella of my mind opens and new things rush in. Honestly, I have to process for a while afterwards.

Nestle the Dachshund can be quite the character and he is not without his issues in life. Sometimes his umbrella is closed tightly in self preservation. Yesterday our umbrellas opened together and it was pure magic.

Nestle has issues with food. This has been developing over time despite brief remissions from endless creative techniques to quell and quiet this tyrannical behavior. I'm the one who carries out the feeding ceremony faithfully every day so it's a bit difficult to arrange TTouches when I'm scooping and preparing kibble. But, life found a way (Thank you, Dr. Grant; "Jurassic Park").

I came home with a new bag of dog food and plunked it down beside the storage bin where I would transfer it after attending other more pressing matters. When I came back there stood Elvis (the huge) checking out the wonderful smells of the food bag while Nestle stood perched on his hind legs (front paws on the bag) growling to claim this great find as HIS alone.

Pffft! Was my response in a light-hearted manner. The only way to get over a pissy kibble party was to go ahead and have a kibble party! After depositing the kibble in its storage container, I grabbed up a handful and sat down amongst the dogs and we proceeded to have ourselves a little "kibble party", everyone got a piece of kibble in turn. Nestle began this adventure from the back of his crate, nervous, growly and unsure but watched with great interest as Jazz (his mentor of the canine kind) and Elvis peacefully enjoyed kibble together. His resistance resolved quickly and soon Nestle was with us.

That night the misery that is feeding time was much reduced with a drastic reduction in growling and carrying on. It still occurs, but with repeated "kibble parties" the calm with feeding time continues to blossom and increase.

Just some cool stuff

There aren't all that many places out there that sell really useful stuff for our canine friends. There seems to be an overabundance of cheep, gimmicky stuff out there that simply doesn't do the job and that's no fun when you need the real deal.

It would never occur to me to go shopping at a motorcycle website for such articles....but here it is! It's not the biggest selection in the world, but it's all good:
Chilhowee Motorcyle Leather