50. No, You May Not Pat Me: Express Your Emotions (in a Healthy Way)
The first time I became acutely aware that dogs do, indeed, feel emotions was when we brought Chaser into the house as a six week-old puppy.
At that time, we’d had Elsie as the single queen canine for almost five years, so she wasn’t expecting a new sibling. But she’d gotten a bit erratic (read: fear-aggressive) with some other dogs in our neighborhood, and her only friends were at doggie daycare (too expensive to send every day), so we thought a new pup might be just the thing.
Though always really sweet, Chaser was a very, shall we say, energetic, pup. She’d come from a farm where she’d been raised with almost a dozen littermates, and she was accustomed to playing until she exhausted herself.
Elsie, on the other hand, was happy to sprint for about 15 seconds, then spend the rest of her walk leisurely exploring the shrubs and weeds at the edge of the field where we roamed.
Then, out of nowhere, this little ball of fire appeared. Although we’d ensured the two wouldn’t try to eat each other by bringing Elsie along when we selected the pup, she never expected said pup to then come home with us.
We situated Chaser on a large blanket on the floor in the den. At that point, Elsie came in to lie down in her usual spot.
Rather than her typical relaxing nap, however, she was immediately met with an exuberant puppy who wanted only to play. The scene went something like this:
Chaser, excited to have another dog with whom to play, leaps onto Elsie’s side and attempts to nuzzle her ear.
Without so much as a glance in Chaser’s direction, Elsie extends a front paw and swats the pup as if hitting a ping-pong ball. Chaser tumbles, rolls across the room, and shakes her head, a little startled at the blow.
Then, in less than a second, she goes back for more–charges at Elsie again, leaping onto her haunch, mouth open for the nibble. This is a fun game!
Elsie, for her part, simply swats the little beast across the room again, with the same force and effect as before. Roll, tumble, head shake.
This pattern repeats itself at least a dozen times, until little Chaser is finally tuckered out. She attempts to curl up close to Elsie, but Elsie won’t allow it. So Chaser trots over to where I’m sitting cross-legged on the floor and curls up next to me.
And then I saw it. Elsie’s face.
Our formerly carefree, calm, contented dog–the dog who’d established her place as the Queen of the House, all eyes on her and all attention directed at meeting her needs at all times–understood that this crazy little monster wasn’t going away.
All the muscles in Elsie’s face seemed to droop at once. I could swear I saw a tear escape her eye. She looked downright. . . . DEPRESSED.
I’d hoped the girls would be friends. (Little did I know back then, that they would–they’d become the most devoted of sisters who adored each other. Chaser grew up thinking of Elsie as a kind of mother/sister hybrid, while Elsie loved her sister more than she loved us. They had ten very happy years together, I’m happy to say).
But at that moment, I could see Elsie’s distress at the new and uncomfortable reality. I leaned over to pat her head and soothe her. For the first time since she’d joined our family five years earlier, my caresses weren’t welcome. She turned abruptly to look away from me and dislodge her head from under my hand.
I was stunned. I burst into tears. Who said dogs don’t have emotions–or show them?
“She hates us!” I wailed to the HH. “She won’t even look at me!”
Luckily, over time, this attitude softened and Elsie began to appreciate having a playmate. Chaser never gave up on her–and one day, I glanced across the room to see the two of them wrestling in play. My heart soared.
That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. To Chaser, Elsie was everything: she followed her around the house like paparazzi on Princess Diana; she slept with her head on Elsie’s bum; she ate every meal beside her; she raced to the front door with her, barking, to deter intruders; she tumbled and wrestled with jaws interlocked–just for fun–on a daily basis.
Here’s one of my favorite videos of the two of them playing their “can’t catch me” game around a soccer net. The best part is the final minutes of the game (around 1:25) where they surprised me with their innovation:
Sadly, Chaser didn’t find an equal companion in Zoey. To Zoey’s credit, she attempted to entice Chaser to play every single day, but poor Chaser could never forgive Zoey for scratching her nose during one of their first encounters. And Chaser, too, made her feelings known.
Our little Zoey is another story entirely. She’s like that drunk girl at the party who can’t keep her feelings to herself. You know the one, right?
From the moment we got her, during our 3-hour drive home from the house in the country, Zoey’s mouth was open. And it was complaining.
Yips, barks, whines, full-out wails–we heard it all. For three long, ear-splitting, heart-wrenching, stomach-churning hours.
Even now, as an adult, Zoey is one of the most expressive dogs I’ve known. If you take too long between picking up her breakfast bowl off the table and placing it on the floor, you’ll hear about it. When you’re busy working with your nose up against the computer screen and Zoey wants to go for a walk, she’ll plant her head on your thigh and stare up at you with those unfathomably sad eyes. And when she’s happy–like, say, when she interacts with Derrick, the trainer at the doggie daycare–she simply cannot contain her elation.
Personally, I think it’s healthy to be that comfortable expressing emotion. And as it turns out, the experts agree: “being honest and authentic about how we feel creates powerful personal connections,” says Forbes.
As a child, I was treated to my mom’s almost-daily displays of emotion. While she was very quick to express certain feelings–sadness, disappointment, anger, general upset–others remained elusive. So I grew up witnessing countless instances of silent tears slowly meandering down her cheeks, suppressed sobs, full-out wails plus other various and sundry forms of unhappiness.
One instance, in particular, remains with me. When I was in high school, a few friends and I were watching a movie in my parents’ basement, sprawled on the faux-leather couches in front of the TV. As it happened, our basement rec room was beside the laundry room, and my mom had to walk through the former in order to reach the latter.
The movie was called Message from My Daughter. It concerned a young mother, diagnosed with cancer shortly after giving birth. She decided to leave a series of cassette tapes recounting her life (because in those days, the idea of digital recordings that could be stored on a small hand-held device was still a mere speck in the imagination of Steve Jobs’ brain).
As the fictional mother’s voice narrated scenes from the past, the film portrayed her history as well as the daughter’s reaction in “the present.”
Throughout the film, my mom trudged this way and that across the room as she loaded the laundry, then carried folded bundles back upstairs. She neither spoke to us nor looked our way; we had no idea if she knew what was on the screen or not.
The final scene of the movie involved the daughter kneeling at her mother’s grave, uttering the words: “Mom, I never knew you, but thank you. I love you.”
At this, my mother entered the room. With only those few seconds of viewing time to nudge her, I glanced up to see tears streaming down my mother’s face. All it took was some unidentified daughter and the words, “I love you.”
As a teen, of course, I was mortified in front of my friends. Today, as a mature woman who possesses a similar hair-trigger emotional switch, I feel nothing but compassion for the woman who was so deeply unhappy in her life that a two-second view of an unknown woman, in a movie she hadn’t even watched, could elicit such a reaction.
As karma would have it, I ended up married to someone who is the polar opposite of my mom–a virtual Spock, who prides himself on his ability to control (read: suppress) emotional vicissitudes. Of course, we all know that approach doesn’t actually work: like barracudas hovering just under the surface, those wiley emotions may unexpectedly jump up and bite you.
And me? Well, let’s say I’m a work in progress. Luckily, after only, oh, 45 years or so of therapy, I’ve learned to express emotions in a more healthy way. I’m still not perfect–and I’m definitely not as evolved as Zoey in this area–but I’m working on it.
And isn’t that all we can ever do?
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Follow up to last week’s challenge: Be Aware of Time, But Not Controlled By It
Somehow, without even realizing it, I embodied this principle last week.
I attended a heart-centered business conference at which I spoke (what does “heart-centered” mean? Let the heart lead when you make business decisions. Seems to have worked exceptionally well for my coach).
Since my speech was the fourth (of five) on Day Two, I was acutely aware that time was passing and that I had to be prepared for the talk. There were nerves aplenty.
At the same time, I met SO many people I’d previously known only online. Amid all the excitement, I didn’t have a moment to spare in greeting, hugging, squealing with delight, gabbing incessantly and exchanging ideas. The time flew by.
It was the perfect “enjoy magical moments in the present” while still being aware that time is passing us by. Accordingly, I savored every single moment.
How about you? How was your experience of time this past week?
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