Sugar Junkies, Beware of Your Dogs…

Your dog may not be psychologically addicted to sugar the way some
of us are, but that doesn’t mean that dog treats laced with sugar –
including honey, molasses, maple syrup, corn syrup – won’t
compromise your dog’s health in the short, and long run.

Unfortunately, most dog treats out there including the organic
healthier ones, have sugar added. Read the labels.

Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and obesity are just a few of the
diseases that we are already seeing as a more common condition
in pets thanks to pet food companies who know how to feed into
our own bad habits…at the expense our pets.

Among the Bird-Brained, Size does not Matter.

I look out my window. In the distance two birds on a wire. I assume
they are mates. One presumably the female is smaller than the other
who sits within an inch by her side to her right.

Suddenly, a larger bird comes in for an abrupt landing about two feet from
where the love birds sit. The female, startled, moves closer to her male
partner who moves about three inches farther down the wire from the
menacing bird. The female scurries in closer to him for protection.

The big bird to her left slowly inches his way to his easy target.

She turns her head to her mate and mutters something. He does nothing. She turns, looks at the big bird before turning back to her mate to make another plea. Nothing.

She gives up, leaves her mate behind and flies to safer ground on a wire a few yards away.

She waits for her lover to follow. He does not. Is he passive, passive/aggressive, not intimidated, stupid?

She flies back to sit to his left again. This time, knowing or merely assuming that her mate is weaker than she, she defies all fear, bravely turns and faces the big, bad bird twice her size. She eases her way closer to the big guy who by some miracle, senses her fearlessness, and makes a beeline out of sight to safety.

Thousands Might Die because of BO

Barack Obama, there are thousands of pure bred hypoallergenic dogs
in shelters across this country that you rule.

Thanks to you, thousands of Americans who never even heard of a
Portuguese Water Dog will now be inspired to create a huge market
for them to be born into thanks to your acceptance of Ted Kennedy’s
pampered “rescue dog”.

Remember the movie, 101 Dalmatians? Audiences around the country
ran out of the theaters to fill their shopping carts with Dalmatians.

Remember, a few months later, most of those Dalmatians were then
sent to death row in shelters around the country? You know very
well that a majority of Americans tire of their new toys as quickly
as they break their word as a matter of convenience.

Regarding the welfare of animals, you are as without heart as
Sarah Palin.

And you know what statistics say about people who abuse animals.
(Your flip remark about the new White House pup being a “rescue dog”
was patronizing to voters, and it was extremely insensitive to the pain
and suffering of non-human animals .)
Not too strong a comparison for me to make about you when one
considers the consequences of your decision, a careless choice
apparently derived solely from your frontal cortex.

Mitigating Dachshund was Too Embarrassed to Shout

Had to set things straight with my dachshund friend this morning.

She finally agreed that from now on when she needs to make a ‘lump sum deposit’ that, instead of hinting with a soft hardly audible growl from the other room for me to hurry and lift her off the bed in time, she will, from this day forward, insure getting my fast attention by using the same piercing yelp she has a habit of employing whenever she insists on an extra treat.

Of course she did rebuttal at first by telling me that a loud bark would contract her muscles thereby speeding up the ‘deposit process’ before help was on its way.

So much for  house-training negotiations with a certain, young dachshund.

Ask Any Barking Dog

Like any animal, humans have an innate capacity for empathy: the ability to feel in our bodies what someone else is feeling in his/her own body, i.e., suppressed emotions.

Sometimes, when I cho0se not  to funnel my anger through non-violent communication, I dramatize it much to the chagrin of who(m)ever is within earshot. The good news is, the discomfort lasts for a very short time for both me and my ‘victim(s)’.

As unacceptably hot-blooded this method might seem to you, isn’t yelling kinder and more honest as a last resort? Isn’t it healthier for everyone than the civilized way of suppressing anger in our bodies for an agonizing length of time?

Suppressing anger is sure to wilt the well-being of those around us, as well   as fester disease in those who would never allow themselves to look bad by expressing it.

Next time your dog seems to be barking at nothing, ask if the barking dog is venting something that needs to be released in you.

Recycling Pain…

This morning I woke up far from a teardrop of joy in my eye.
I felt anchored to the bottom of the sea with lead in my heart.
Whenever depressed, I have no other choice but to breathe
deep within to find the cause.

Usually, the heavy feeling is  caused by my thoughts about poor me.        But often it has to do with someone in my life who is feeling bad                from his or her own creation of self-pity. I usually call whoever Isuspect for a reality check and get a yes, s/he was down about this or that.

But this morning when I checked in to see why I was feeling so
awful, I saw in my mind’s eye a pig factory farm. As my heart
zoomed in closer to get a better feel, I saw the misery of these
poor, intelligent empaths condemned to suffer a horrid life in our
human-made Dante-esque Infernos.

If my little canine empath feels, and then, reflects back to me
my pain and my joy, perhaps I could recycle the pain that I feel
emanating from the pigs – including the pain I feel for them – into joy.

Would these empaths then feel the joy?

Would you?

Absolutely. Perhaps. In our dreams.

A World No Longer Run by Half-Wits

Some of us connect more easily with animals and nature because we let our intelligence thrive naturally like an animal, in circular all inclusive whole-brain patterns of thought. Free beyond the limitations of exclusive linear  logic used by men and women confined to the boundaries of   the frontal cortex.

If we are ever to become wholly human, we’ll need to embrace  our  innate  animal intelligence.

Until we do, we are half-wits fumbling around the planet, disconnected from the rest of creation with  little chance of finally catching up to non-human species in their evolution.

With little chance of cleaning up this mess we’ve made of Life on Earth.

The Existential Cat Who Was Clear About Pain

I received a strong impression from a cat that she wanted frowns on her friends’ faces, instead of their constant gooey smiles of affection regarding her feline self.

She communicated that she began biting the base of her tail making it bald and inflamed because undying affection was driving her mad with boredom.

When I asked her why she would cause herself and her humans pain, her answer was this, only without words:

“Adoration is all they show me. I want other shapes of love, worry being a big one of them. I want to know what worry pain is like for me and for them where I am concerned. Pain is part of Life. My two friends want pain because I see them making all kinds of it for themselves…anger…horror…stress, yet, they complain that pain is bad; probably why it feels bad to them. They make it their favorite teacher, yet they dread it. I need to get it.”

So, am I hearing correctly, that you want to be human?

“No. I want to be more than the status quo boring bored house cat with limited emotional experience. I want to be forever evolving living life passionately, not imitating it. I want to bask in the full emotional range of being alive. ”

Would you want to be a dog?

“Why would you think that I would want to plummet that low?”

Isn’t your comment a bit speciesist?

“Yes, if that’s what it takes to feel the other side of pleasure.”

Why wouldn’t you want to instead, slip deep down inside yourself and bask in the empty peaceful space between emotional polarities, the only thing that’s truly real in any of us?

“If I wanted just that, then, I would have stayed on the eternal other side, and not be on this side of life talking to a halfwit.”

You’re pretty smart for a cat.

“You’re pretty stupid for a woman.”

Did your paw just swat my face?

Being judgmental is not human, it’s animal; just as is, unconditional love.

Pleasure and pain and the space between: we can’t have one without the others. At least, not on this side of life, or we might as well be dead.

Just my take on interacting with a certain feisty cat.

The Horse Who Bucked for Love

A client called about her horse’s aloof behavior. I quickly assumed that the equine wanted to be alone and didn’t like exercise because it was her nature to be lazy and withdrawn.

We invent logical reasons to say why an animal acts the way s/he does; easier and more convenient than breathing deep beneath the surface of a glance.

But in going deeper with the horse, we felt her lonely heart, a heart diminished by a lack of acknowledgment of her true essence. She felt invalidated.

She bucked whenever anyone tried to mount her, not because she was lazy, but because she felt she was being treated as a mere riding object to be used. Her guardian who actually cares deeply about this horse’s well-being – hence our phone session – was not aware of this.

When her guardian and I energetically reached out to the horse with our hearts, the horse’s heart opened wide, and all three of us – the horse in her pasture, my client at home, and me on the phone miles away – basked for ten full minutes in the energy of absolute beauty emanating from this horse’s heart.

This morning, I got an email from my client saying that when she went out to the barn this morning, the equine, instead of keeping her usual distance, walked up to her for the first time with a look of love in her eyes, and a soft willingness to – for the first time as well – allow her guardian to wrap her arms around her neck and hug her.

Recognition and understanding of our true nature. Isn’t that what any animal, human or nonhuman wants…to feel fully alive and complete?

Although this post is for the weak at heart, it might be too gritty for the weak at heart to read.

Rod Lurie says in his online Huffingtonpost article that the film, “The Reader,” is a denial of the accountability and memorability of the Nazi’s industrialized slaughter of Jews during the Holocaust.

As if there is only one holocaust we should be concerned about.

Which brings to my mind and heart, Abe Lincoln’s beautiful concern for
humanity and all living creatures when he said:
“Man cannot be wholly human until he has mercy for all creatures”.

The expeditious method of slaughtering Jews was taught to the
Nazis by Henry Ford who based his own assembly line on the already existing industrialized American method of slaughtering food animals (animals as innocent, intelligent, and sensitive as a human child).

Human genocide has little chance of ending without our hearts first becoming strong enough to overpower our heartless denial that permits the daily gruesome genocide of billions of our non-human animal relatives treated each day like Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, like Tutsis in the Rwandan Genocide.

Like all who have been, and continue to be, brutally denied.

Horrific deeds attract horror to us. Acts of compassion attract compassion.                                                                                                                         And so on and, so on….
How rich that the Golden Rule is finally in our faces to the extent that if we continue to ignore it, we shall all perish.

May our exquisite planet, in making all of our lives on her possible, be our
Valentine today for us to love and cherish her children forever.