V

 I have been working with our family dog, V. I've had a lot of free time at night to do this. I have had some interesting and life changing perspectives as I have worked with her. I had a lot of frustration with her in the beginning. She wasn't a breed that I had done any research on and I thought that I would like a velcro dog that just wants to be with me all of the time. Like, a little shadow buddy. It was too much too fast. I wanted to figure out why I thought this dog would be good for me and our home. 

"UGH- V! You're so damn needy for attention and it bothers me that you get mega offended when you don't get what you want!"  When I said that out loud to her she just looked me straight in the eyes. I quickly apologized to her and that was the beginning of our relationship. Yes, her eyes told me that she is just a reflection of my worst behavior.

I started to study her and stopped trying to get her to bend to me. What a life changing experiment and it's still evolving. She is very intelligent so it wasn't too hard to get her to hear me. Not listen to me, but hear me. It took very little words and a lot of understanding. I took her out one night to experiment on a thought that I had. She was overly confident walking in front of me and no amount of frustration could get her to just stay next to me. I stopped leashing her all together because I wanted to see if I could build trust and confidence in our relationship. 

It was dark and the oncoming traffic headlights on the road next to me were a little blinding so I couldn't see her at one point. I knew she was there somewhere, but could not see her at all. Did she trust me to be right behind her like I trusted that she was somewhere up ahead of me? I tested that question and hid behind an electrical box. I saw her frantically running back and forth on the trail looking for me. I made myself a little more visible and she found me and she was relieved like I've never seen her. From that night she has never walked too far ahead of me and she continuously checks in on our walks. I use 2 words with her on our walks and a snap of my fingers. That is it. I didn't have to force her to bend. She felt the absence of security and knew she had to make changes if she wanted to keep that feeling of security. 

Do you see where I'm going with this? Security isn't always there when we ourselves are confident in it. It takes a bending of our stubbornness to gain exactly what we want. It almost sounds counterintuitive. I'm really not confident in relationships flowing and so I was like V in suffocating it and then taking advantage of another by feeling confident that if I walked too far ahead that they would still be there. Like V, I panic after I've pushed it too far. I run frantic playing subconscious games that I have failed to see that I was doing. "If I react this way and cause anxiety within another then they will be scared to lose me forever and come back." Trust me, I don't want to force anyone into my life that doesn't want to be there and I am recognizing that the very thing I don't want to do are the pricks I kick against by doing exactly that. Every time I have done this subconscious reaction I regret it instantly. I know my true self would never have done that. Why am I doing that? I believe I've been doing this for some time and I'm aware of it now. It will take practice, but I will continue to learn through our little V and cherish the excitement within me to be a little more like her (without the overly neediness that she's still working through). V has fully invested in me and I have fully invested in her. She knows how to get what she wants from me now and I know how to get what I want from her. This is a really intriguing paradigm shift for us both. The relationship didn't change either one of our cores. It took us both to a level of respect and love for a dog that I've never felt before.