Select Page

I am writing this because I was watching my human, you know her as Dr. Linda, doing yoga on her mat in the living room.  I like my human, don’t get me wrong.  But sometimes she misses the mark by a mile.  She says she does yoga for “inner peace”.  So naturally I offered to contribute by licking her face while she is on the floor, and believe it or not, she pushes me away.  While talking about inner peace!  It is nonsensical stuff like that that made me realize the need for some basic canine wisdom here.

I’ve watched and listened to my human and her friends long enough to grasp the kinds of emotional and psychological handicaps humans operate under, relative to dogs.  Watching and listening is what your dogs and cats do, you know, except for those precious moments when you are playing fetch or tug with us, or feeding us.  We watch and listen and can barely believe our eyes and ears.

As near as I can tell, and incredible though it sounds to dog ears, the basic issue is that humans do not experience wholeness as their normal reality.  And a whole slew of problems spring from that one.  I’m talking about the illusion that each human is an individual, disconnected from other humans, and nature.  If you are a human, you are so sure you are an isolated, unique soul that you don’t even recognize this as the most basic error.  If you are a dog, well, we can hardly conjure up that unique identity thing with all our imagination.  Still, I think you can learn better, so take heart.

Here is what your dogs know to be true.  The same life force flows through every living thing.  It doesn’t matter if you have fur or feathers, paws or fingers, scales or shells.  I’m not saying the same kind of life force, I’m saying the same life force.  Imagine a huge tree with a million massive limbs.  Each limb has a million branches, and each branch a million twigs.  All connected to one vast trunk.

Each twig ends in a leaf.  If the leaf is human, it looks around and sees the other leaves, but never looks down at the branches that connect them.  These human leaves imagine they are separate, not connected to anyone, much less everyone.

Dogs and cats, and most everyone else, sees the twigs on the branches on the limbs on the tree trunk.  We are all leaves on the same tree.  We are all as connected as that.  We are all the same soul.  Trust the dog, she knows.