What My New Dog Has Taught Me About Being Human

Almost two months ago, I started fostering a dog—a two-year old, long-haired Weimaraner used for breeding. When I first got her, if I reached down to touch her back, she would skedaddle out of the way, because she was sure I was going to hit her. She would tuck tail whenever she went through doors, probably because she had been kicked through them in her former life.

She also had an iron bladder, once holding it for 17 hours, because she seemed afraid to go, no matter how long we walked around outside.

I have since adopted her, because I fell completely in love with her, and you wouldn’t know she was the same dog. We still have some issues to work out, but she is learning how to dog now. How to be open and full of ease and joy and life.

No, I am not the next Dog Whisperer, but I have learned that how I am with Birdie is how I want to be with me and everyone else I meet.

One of the first things I’ve noticed that I do with her is to be as grounded and trustworthy as I can. When I approach her in a centered and rooted way, I can see my energy immediately translating into her body. She settles and looks up at me with her stunning, soulful eyes.

This reminds me of a sign I saw on Facebook. It was at the entrance of a hospital, and it said something like, “This is a place of healing. You are responsible for the energy you bring into this space.”

What if we kept that in mind every time we entered a room, a meeting, a Monday, a relationship?

Something else I do is to make sure my words and my hands are always good things for her.

Again, can you imagine how different the world would be if we could live this way all the time?

The one thing that consistently still makes her lose her mind is squirrels, especially the white ones where I live who cast their witchy magic over her.

As I watch her stalk and point—what she has been trained to do—I’ve wondered about how I’ve been trained to act and react in particular ways. My yoga teacher says that we humans are domesticated just like dogs. We get taught how to “human” by our parents, our family, our friends, and now, of course, social media.

This has also gotten me curious. When is it good to lean into those deep pulls inside of us? When is it good to be so alert that our bodies hum with readiness? When do those things turn us into a trembling or barking mess? When can those undeniable pulls cause stress and strain to ourselves and those around us?

Something else I’ve been doing is steadily increasing the challenges in Birdie’s life. We’ve gone from walking on a leash on the sidewalk (something she’d clearly never done before), to walking on gravel to hiking up rocky paths to leaping over creeks.

Every time she is faced with a new challenge, she reverts back to her fearful self, as so many of us do. It’s what she knows.

But then she watches Alfred, my seven-pound Chiweenie, who trundles through the world like he owns the place. When he leaps over a burbling creek, I can almost see Birdie thinking, “Well, if he can do it . . . .” And lo and behold, she can, and she does.

And she does because she sticks close to someone who makes her brave, who invites her to be her best self.

And she does because she has put her faith in me, someone who brings her goodness while at the same time challenging her to try harder and harder things.

Because I not only want her to trust me. I want her to trust herself. To know—Hey, I can do this. I’ve got this.

What would life be like if we believed this mirrors how the Greater Than interacts with us? What if we believed there is a wild energy who is there for us, loving us, walking with us no matter what challenge or fear we face?

But—and this is the hard part—we have to walk our own path. No one, not even the divine, can do it for us, just like I can’t do it for Birdie. She has to figure it out for herself.

Life will come at us—because the world is the world and humans are human. When it does, we might react like Birdie does now that I’ve had her a couple of months. I can see her brain telling her one thing (that it’s okay), but her body still goes to fear, and maybe it always will.

And that’s okay. It’s all any of us can do—to live and trust, to be alert and alive and strain and struggle and to circle back to love again and again. To know without a doubt: we’ve got this.