My Dog

My dog is the best dog ever.  He’s fun and playful and sweet and loyal and so much more.  Over the past few months, I’ve found myself feeling some concern for what I’ve been observing as some type of indicators of physical decline.  I’ve been sort of “pushing against” or resisting where he is and what’s happening in the sense that I haven’t really been ok with the natural unfolding of what I’m observing.  I’ve been looking for ways for him to improve, or I’ve been wishing for things to be different, or I’ve been hoping he would get better, and I’ve even wondered why he just hasn’t decided to die in an attitude of  “why are you still hanging on”?  He’s not in any way suffering, I just haven’t accepted that he is where he is; and with that are thoughts of, “I don’t want him to suffer and I want him to feel good”.   I haven’t made peace with where he is.  I haven’t really just allowed him to be where he is in total acceptance that it’s all unfolding perfectly.  I realize now what I’ve been doing, which was offering him conditional love.  What I was really relaying to him was the message that “it’s not ok to be where you are and to be showing these indicators and you need to get better, or to die or to do something different or to be different than you’re being so that I can find some relief in some way and feel better”.  With that realization, also came the revelation that this dog isn’t “done” yet.  He’s still teaching me, as he always has since the day we came together, which was over 14 years ago.  He has taught me so much about allowing and playfulness and being eager about life and expecting things to go well and being easy and going with the flow and knowing that I’m deserving of goodness and that nothing needs to be earned and neither do I have to struggle or suffer or prove my way.  Yes, I have learned this and so much more from this dog and still, he is teaching me unconditional love, which I think, is one of the best things I could ever come to know.  For to love unconditionally, to allow people and situations and conditions to be just as they are, knowing that all is well no matter how it looks, and that all is unfolding perfectly and that it’s all alright, opens me up to just loving what-is without needing it to be different.  One of the best teachers in my life has been this dog, and I find myself so appreciative of him and knowing that when he decides his “work” is done, he shall quietly slip out of his body and into another form, and I will eternally have been left a better person for my interactions with him.