animal companions

Ultimate Happy to See You

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I’ve had animal companions all my life, and it has always brought a deeper sense of joy into my world. After the loss of my beloved collie at the age of 10, I never wanted to make that leap and get a dog again. I’ve had wonderful cats and precious parrots but no dog.

A little over a year ago, we welcomed a mix breed rescue into our lives, and our world hasn’t been the same. What a great gift!

The thing about dogs is that they love you unconditionally and to the maximum level allowed anywhere short of Heaven. Of course, other animals can extend that same degree of love, but few are so demonstrative of it. Our dog teaches us daily how to love. She never holds back. She shares without reservation under all sorts of conditions.

One of the most striking things about her love is the complete happiness she reveals each time she greets us anew. Whether we’ve been gone to the post office for 10 minutes or have been out for much of the day, the same amount of love is lavished on us, and the joy she shows is undeniable and immense. She jumps into our arms (whether we’re ready or not) and offers as many kisses and hugs as we will tolerate.

When I mentioned this to someone, the person suggested it might be because dogs live so much shorter a life span than we humans, and every minute seems like forever to them as a result. I expect there is some truth to this. But what I know for sure is that she simply wants to be in our presence, constantly streaming her love to us. That love is almost more than she seems able to contain, and it must be expressed and emitted.

What if we loved like that? What if we greeted each other with so much joy from our hearts at meeting our kindred? What if we could hardly contain the love we held and felt we might burst if we didn’t share it?

What a way to live that would be. If we felt and shared half as much love and joy as a dog, we could make the world a place of wonder and grace for everyone and everything. So I decided I’m going to try that. Tonight when my husband comes home from his conference, I’m going to greet him as if he were the most important person in my life. I’m going to kiss him and hug him and tell him I love him. I’d love to make him feel as welcomed home as our pup does.

Will I succeed? Well, I’m not as unconditionally loving as our dog, but I do have a great deal of love in my heart, so why not let it flow?

Will you join me in working toward sending joy and love to those dear to you? I suspect it will change our lives and the lives of those we touch, and maybe, just maybe, it will ripple out into the world in an ongoing flood of love enough to fill the planet.

Here’s to living as lovingly as a dog and to the ultimate happy to see you!

Empath to the Max

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I continue to learn from our dog. After over five decades without a canine companion, I’m remembering how marvelous they are in so many ways. What I see above all is their ability as empaths. They don’t shy away from being empathic. They lean into it. They give everything without a thought for holding back.

Our precious Honey cherishes us. It’s that simple. She follows me around the house seeking always to be of assistance. She’s my little four-legged spirit guide who happens to have a body. And she reminds me to Love with a capital L, that love is the most important thing in all the world, that giving love is itself a reward (and may lead to treats).

So many of us born as empaths look at our abilities as a sort of affliction. I’ve heard some friends call it a curse. But here’s the truth: If we were empaths in the same way animals are, we might acknowledge this ability as a great gift. You see, they recognize and feel our needs, feelings, and issues and simply love us through them. Dogs don’t pity us, which would attach said issue to them. Instead, they exude love and hold space for us to move through whatever the problem is. Yes, they want to help. But their innate means of doing so is always the same across the board no matter the challenge we face: love, love, love, love, love (and, of course, lick, lick, lick, lick, lick).

As humans, feeling someone else’s distress may lead us to embody that energy because we either (1) mistakenly identify it as our own or (2) we pity the person and allow the energy to attach to us. So far as I can discern, dogs don’t do this. They sense our distress and, rather than taking it on, emit tons of love in response, which we can choose to either receive or block given our feelings in the moment. When we receive that love a dog so freely offers, it acts like a salve to soothe the senses. While it may not solve our problems, that love can ease our feelings, not because the dog ingested them the way so many empaths do but because we allowed the love to nurture us and help us to heal.

This is a huge lesson for someone like me. I spent much of my life pitying those who were feeling sad. Pitying them only reinforces those feelings. I know this from being on the receiving end of that situation. But pouring out love costs absolutely nothing and can only serve to aid. It never depletes energy as pity can do on both sides of the equation (for the pitied and the pitier). Love always offers the hope, the prayer, the intention, and the energy for the person to rise above self-pity or sorrow.

I also spent a large portion of my life ingesting people’s hurts by claiming them as my own. I’m grateful to our dog for showing me a better way. She innately understands the feelings of others do not belong to her. She can sense them without embracing them. She recognizes from whence they come because dogs are extremely aware energetically. But empaths are as well if we focus on that inner awareness rather than hiding from it. Leaning into our empathy means being aware of what we’re sensing, pinpointing its source, and recognizing that we can honor the gift of being aware and still avoid imbibing and claiming the feelings ourselves. We do that by loving—just loving that person (the source of those emotions) so completely that nothing else can infiltrate our hearts or minds.

So the endpoint of the lesson, which I’m still getting, is to love unconditionally. Doing that allows me to feel without holding any of the energy of the other person. We can give thanks for the knowing and then let go of the emotions that belong to others by tapping into the infinite stream of Divine love and letting so much of it fill us and flow through us that it washes away all traces of anything less than itself.

I believe dogs (and many other animals) maintain this as part of their natural empathic gift. They would likely never consider doing anything else. Someday I hope to be as true an empath as our precious dog, living daily in that stream of unconditional love.