July 26th, 2010
"What's on Your Dog's Mind?"
Susan Hill's Blog
http://www.canineminds.com
So you had a really rotten stressful day. Everything seemed to go wrong. The horrendous traffic complete with an overturned tractor trailer and two cars on fire made the commute an extra two hours. Hungry, tired and totally drained you enter the doorway and are joyfully greeted by happy smiling dog faces and bird beaks. No matter what happens animals always focus on what's positive in their lives. Whatever trauma has happened to them (and some endure really terrible cruel acts by people) they manage to view their lives as good.
A young black male Doberman named Andre was waiting to be evaluated by me at Doberman Rescue in Sandown, NH. From the left side of his body he appeared fit and ready to take on the world. But upon closer inspection his right rear leg was crudely amputated at the hip with an excess of skin that had since been surgically altered. But when he first came to the shelter they said the skin hung down 9 inches almost like a sagging utter. They had a veterinary surgeon cosmetically alter the sack so he could function better without the sway following him when he ran. And run he does; he doesn't let the loss of a leg deter him.
I sat with Andre and asked him telepathically what had happened to him since the people were asking about his leg and wanted to know the details surrounding the limb severance. He was uncooperative. He said, " yeah, the people always want to know that." He was so happy and ready to play with the other dogs. He didn't want his playtime to be disrupted. He didn't let this loss interfere with his activities let alone did he desire to remember the catastrophe. The severance happened years ago and he saw no reason to drudge up bad memories. He had "bigger fish to fry" so to speak.
I explained that the people really wanted to know what happened. They were upset that he lost his leg. I told him the people wanted to understand him better and needed to know the details of his amputation but only if he wanted to talk about it of course. Again he emphatically communicated, "No. I do not want to talk about it. It is not important to me. I really want to get back to the other dogs. "
Sitting there in the viewing room I felt I had failed at my job. The shelter had hired me to talk with him and if he refused to talk there was nothing I could do. I would have wasted hours of time for nothing. Not wanting to let it go I tried one last time," if you would just send me a moving picture of what happened quickly I won't trouble you again." "Oh, alright," he balked, "but don't ask me again about it."
He showed me a movie about his former life with a man who was working in a wood working shop. It was a freak accident. Somehow while the man was working using power tools a circular saw blade got loose and flew off its base at a very high velocity striking the dog at the exact point on his hip joint. The leg was severed immediately. Andre received no medical care but miraculously survived the ordeal without bleeding to death. This explanation would account for the huge sack of skin left behind and jagged scaring. Andre was relieved to be done with the archiving of the incident and happily went on his way back to his temporary pack members, who also seemed unaffected by his loss.
This is a perfect example of how people can project their own pain onto animals. Imagining our own pain in the same situation we put our pain onto animals believing they, too, feel the same way. Animals do not hold onto things like loss and in fact move forward very quickly. They can be affected if people become depressed as animals mirror our own emotions at times.
Perhaps by being with our animal friends during times of loss and interacting with them we can observe the way they accept what life deals them. We can relax into the now and realize just the way they do that everything really is okay In this moment. All we have to do is breathe and create a spacious awareness around what is happening.