This last weekend we had some friends over for some Christmas cheer.
All the guests know that the house is filled with dogs, which means dog hair, dog slobber, dog paw prints, etcetera. Given the fact that they all either have dogs or horses, they are OK with that.
But there was a newcomer on the scene this year and Piper wanted nothing to do with her.
Piper is a sensitive dog. One thing that Piper is especially sensitive to is incongruence. When someone acts one way but says something completely different, or gives mixed messages, he will not let that person touch him. People sometimes ask if he has been abused and I say, "Nope, he's just sensitive." But my inside voice is saying "he senses that you are unbalanced in your chi and doesn't want to be around that."
These mixed messages have nothing to do with how people feel about dogs or Piper; it has to do with their own personal baggage. The energy that they are sending out is not matching up with their actions and this causes Piper (and most dogs actually) great concern. In fact, he mistrusts the person's intentions. This is a self-preservation tactic common among all species of animals, even humans. But we humans tend to push that intuition aside and instead listen to what I call secondhand thoughts - the chatter in our brains that is related to the baggage we carry and causes many of our communication breakdowns.
This internal sonar system is meant to warn dogs (and us) of situations that could be harmful. When Piper slinked away from the new person in our home, it was clear that even though she was a kind woman, she was obviously troubled by something that was causing the incongruence.
After my divorce, when I began dating again, Piper would literally place himself between any prospective suitors and myself and subsequently push me away if he sensed any inauthenticity in their character. And he was 100 per cent correct every single time. The day he sniffed the man at my front door and then nudged his hand asking for a head rub I knew I had met a good man.
Piper's energy sensitivity is not specific to strangers; he does this with me too. When I am putting on a happy face to hide feelings of anxiety or stress he will move away from me when I sit with him. When out on a walk he will suddenly become hearing impaired and unlikely to come to me when I call. To rectify this, I don't need to stop being anxious or stressed because, as we all know, turning off those emotional states can't be done with the press of a button. I simply acknowledge those emotions silently to myself and feel them. By acknowledging my unbalanced emotional state, I release the resistance that I created with my insincere happy face and become congruent or in alignment. Once this happens Piper will seek out my affection.
As I said, all dogs (and horses too!) have the ability to sense misalignment in the emotional state of people around them. It is one of the many reasons they are used for therapy work for people with PTSD, mental and physical challenges, or other psychological issues. But like most things, if we don't recognize this trait they will soon stop showing their empathetic side to us and ignore our emotional distress as we ignore their attempts to alert us to our imbalances.
Recognizing when our dogs are trying to connect with us emotionally requires us to look within ourselves and acknowledge our emotional state, focus on our dogs' behaviour, and see if there is a correlation with what our dogs are doing and how we are feeling.
When I had a moment to speak with the guest Piper was shunning, I told her to silently tell Piper what was troubling her heart instead of hiding it from him and he would come to say hello. At first she looked at me like I was a bit nuts, but after a moment she smiled softly, looked over at Piper by the fireplace and said, "I can do that."
Have a wonderful Christmas!
Joan Klucha has been working with dogs for more than 15 years in obedience, tracking and behavioural rehabilitation. Contact her through her website k9kinship.com
