HEAL! – How Dogs Cure Us

Nature is in every human animal’s DNA. It made us, sustains us and comprises us, body and soul.

No matter how much we may try to control or deny it, no matter how we presume to virtualize it, no matter how we smother it in busy-ness, we can’t escape it. Wherever we live, even if it’s a place where signs of life are few, our essential belonging to Nature is hard-wired into us. And at some level, whether we realize it or not, we all deeply long to embrace it—to bring it home.

This is why human beings have dogs. (Okay, I know dogs aren’t the only animals folks keep as pets, but what can I say? I’m a dog person.)

That reminds me of a joke: Know the difference between dogs and cats? Dog looks up at its person and thinks, My gosh, he pets me, feeds me, talks to me, gives me everything I could possibly need. He must be God.

Cat looks up at its person and thinks, Well let’s see, she pets me, feeds me, talks to me, gives me everything I could possibly need…I must be God.

ALL PHOTOS, UNLESS OTHERWISE CREDITED: Pixabay

FROM PRACTICAL TO PRECIOUS  

PHOTO: Mario Sanchez via WikiMedia

From the ancient Egyptian grain trader relying on his cats—while also deifying them—to control vermin; to the medieval lord and his falcon, or the modern hunter or rancher trying to make sense of both loving animals and slaughtering them, our domes- tication of wild animals is as old as we are.

While most of these creatures, including dogs, were originally tamed to work for us, there are, as it turns out, other reasons we’re so fond of having pets; the blurring of the line between expediency and those other less practical benefits dates back at least 12,000 years.

Here are just a few of the reasons why we cynophiles want—and need—dogs in our lives:

Companionship – No matter how perfect we might feel our connection with another human being, personal relationships are hard. We try to be good mates, but we always end up hurting and disappointing each other. We see our own shortcomings reflected in them.
     But with a dog there is no guile, no misplaced expectation. They are what they are…and they love us for exactly who we are. In fact, we see in them many of the traits we wish we possessed.

    I sometimes wonder if dogs don’t feel sorry 
    for how we’ve forfeited our own child-puppy 
    spontaneity.

A Need to Nurture – Most humans, it seems, are so independent, so self-sufficient, that we won’t admit to wanting—much less needing—anyone to take care of us. But we all need to nurture.
     Sure, we do it instinctively with children and perhaps the aged, but what about after the nest is empty once again; what about for those who no longer have—or have never had—someone to take care of? Two words: bow and wow.

PHOTO: fortheloveofthedogblog.com

Entertainment – Dogs make us laugh…and cry…and sing and dance… We just love to watch them. We people are fascinating to watch too, but dogs are way more fun. It touches more than our funny bone; it touches a place that yearns to be that spontaneous, that genuine, that free.
     And I sometimes wonder if dogs don’t enjoy watching us too—maybe just to see our reaction to them…or perhaps feel sorry for how so many of us grown-ups have forfeited our own child-puppy spontaneity.

Exercise – You’ve heard dog owners say they’re not sure who’s taking whom for the walk, right? Well it’s true. We need dogs to get us off our big fat butts and thin little screens and out of the house.
     By the way, these folks we see now and then being hauled passively around on their bikes or skateboards by the slave labor of their poor crazed, panting pups…they just don’t get it.

     We have allowed our awareness to be steeped 
     out of us by a culture that can no longer dis- 
     tinguish reality from entertainment. Dogs, 
     thank God, can still tell the difference!

Role Modeling – We find much to admire in our dogs: their generous spirits and modest needs; their unbridled enthusiasm; their obvious empathy when we’re sad or hurting; their fierce loyalty; their ability to thoroughly inhabit the simplest moment.
     And then there’s the way they handle adversity. A dog doesn’t blame anyone if it gets sick or hurt, doesn’t feel sorry for itself when it loses an eye or a leg. Hell, most wouldn’t even blame their owner for abusing them. My wife and I call this “just doing,” and often notice how it educates our own dealings with life’s hard knocks.

PHOTO: John Hurd via WikiMedia Commons

Awareness – It seems more and more people are so captivated by their own mostly-inane thoughts—or, perhaps more aptly nowadays, their iPhones or iPads—that they don’t have a clue what’s really going on, often right in front of their noses…until their dogs show them.
     We humans have rather easily allowed our awareness, our attention spans, to be steeped out of us by a culture that can no longer distinguish reality from entertainment. Dogs, thank God, can still tell the difference! 

Social Lubrication – When it comes to ways of meeting and interacting with other human beings, we’ve all heard the tried-and-true tricks: sign up for a community ed. class; volunteer; hang out in the produce aisle at the supermarket and ask folks how to tell when a cantaloupe is ripe.
     But the best way, hands down, whether you’re a young single person prospecting for dates, a lonely elder or just someone who loves other people, is to walk down the street or through the park with a dog—puppies are most effective. The way I figure, anyone who doesn’t love stopping to pet your dog isn’t worth meeting anyway.

PHOTO: dailypuppy.com

Centering – I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that dogs have a spiritual presence. Like sunshine on our skin or the smell of food, the presence of dogs causes things to happen in our bodies and minds. Something opens up; a hardness inside softens and melts. The toughest character—even, they say, a hardened criminal—turns into a cooing, caressing softie.

Have you ever seen the face of a hospitalized child or a dementia patient light up when that sweet chord of connection with a dog is struck? What is this chemistry, and why is it so powerful that I feel it change me even when I just look at a picture of a dog?

Healing – Pet dogs don’t just take us outdoors, don’t just show us how to be healthy and whole; they impart genuine healing energy to our bodies and spirits. Scientific studies have shown, for example, that petting a dog lowers people’s heart rates and blood pressures.
Therapy dogs provided through a number of treatment programs—for Alzheimers, autism, PTSD, hospice, and many others—are well recognized for providing obvious, measurable healing.

So how do dogs—yours, or perhaps those you only covet—make you feel? 
What do you most admire about them? How do they make your life better? How have they changed you?

We fellow, fawning cynophiles out here would love to hear from you!!

VIRTUAL “REALITY”…REALLY? – How Nature Can Save Us From Ourselves

“When I listened to developers talk about their eagerness to “immerse” audiences in multisensory experiences, I thought I detected a less savory desire 
to imprison them in programming — to leave them with no sensory exit.”
VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN – Virtual Reality Fails Its Way to Success – New York Times Magazine, Nov. 14, 2014

PASSIVE, TENSE
A vacuous reality star has managed to sucker the American media and a lot of citizens into paying attention to him as a possible presidential candidate. The Real Housewives of Fill-In-the-Blank continue to garner astounding cable TV ratings. Our kids and grandkids, exposed to advertising on every surface from the ubiquitous glowing screens, to supermarket floors, to people’s bodies, can identify hundreds of corporate logos, but not the trees and animals living on their own block.

We're being lulled, surely but not so slowly, into a kind of consumer torpor. We're allowing corporations—some would say machines—to not only decide what we see and how and when we see it, but in a very real sense control our comings and goings, the very tempo of our lives.

     They lure us ever closer to the end-game…
     making us think it's all our idea.

One social scientist recently asserted that the sci-fi plot line of computers taking over the world isn't really so far beyond the realm of possibility. They lure us ever closer to the end-game, all the while making us think it's all our idea.

A CLASSIC FAUSTIAN BARGAIN
Okay, so maybe that outcome’s a bit over the top, but the steps we’ve already taken in that direction are troublesome. In too many cases, something more or less tangible we once knew and loved has been stolen and stripped of at least one aspect of its reality, replaced, in a kind of Faustian bargain, with another quality the trend-makers would like us to think we asked for.

Among their cynical promises: convenience and other creature comforts; saving time and money; a competitive edge; safety; control; “connectedness.” And what are we left with? More time glued to screens and buying stuff we don’t need—a surrender we’re promised will make us happy, but which ends up doing just the opposite.

  It’s not reality; it’s entertainment. And we’re 
  raising a generation of kids who will no longer 
  be able to tell the difference.

Whether it’s information, entertainment, connection or inspiration, they’ve taken reality, with all its color, depth and imperfection, all its challenges to reflect and ponder, and repackaged it under a different definition of “reality.” Thing is, the new version was never meant to serve human needs, but those of the corporations and czars who control all that “content.”

Sped up, dumbed own, flattened, sterilized, lowest-common-denominator-ized, what remains is simply an illusion. From vapid sitcoms to children’s programming, to the news, it’s not reality; it’s entertainment. And I’m afraid we’re raising a generation of kids who will no longer be able to tell the difference.

What’s the big deal, you ask? Well, like pushers of other addictions, the trend-setting, faux-reality machine is no dummy. Start ‘em on a few seemingly harmless free samples; get ‘em hooked; they’ll come back.

DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS
It’s not until you step back and look at the big picture that you see the scope of the deception. Everywhere you turn there are examples of things and experiences folks are passively choosing no longer to actually experience or control first-hand:

• Fantasy football
• Virtual reality headsets and games
• Automatic bill-paying
• “Crowd-sourced” information and opinion
• The cloud
• Twitter-speak (communication reduced from something that once had tone and color—a heart and soul if you will—to the equivalent of primitive grunts.)
• Apps (For watching TV; ordering dinner—even when your wait person is within eye- and earshot; for dealing with your plumber…I could go on.)

• On-line dating
• Virtual medicine
• Telecommuting
• “Friending”
• Twenty-four-seven “connectedness”
• Seven-and-a-half hours a day on-screen* 
• Self-driving cars (and a bourgeoning field of other robotics)

For these activities and many more, we are now completely at the mercy of our computers and their ability—or willingness—to continue operating at our beck and call. It would take only one thing for any of these pursuits to simply quit and leave us helpless: the corruption of the vehicle.

We’ve already seen, albeit on an as yet less-than-apocalyptic scale, the signs of such betrayal. Power outages, air traffic control breakdowns, stock market crashes, data security breaches, service denials and an untold number of other hacks & whacks happen all the time, yet somehow we fail to put two and two together. Are these just tests, one might ask, of how much we’re willing to give up for our end of that Faustian bargain?

       The more technology-driven our lives 
       become, the more vitamin N we need to 
       balance the virtual with the real.

A DOSE OF VITAMIN N
Who are we? Where are the patience, the reflection, the curiosity, the heart and soul, the nuance, the character that have defined honest, self-aware, hard-working cultures for so many great generations? Where is the healthy tension between risk and reward?

In this age of Belviq and Botox, of Simbalta and Cialis, of more cures than there are maladies, there must be something we can take for this atrophy of mind, body and spirit that threatens to brainwash us. Right?

Turns out the remedy already exists. Always has, right under our noses. It is Nature. Or as Richard Louv so famously calls it in his best-selling book, The Nature Principle, vitamin N.

Louv never says—nor do I—that we should simply quit technology like a bad habit. What he does say is that the more technology-driven our lives become, the more vitamin N we need to balance the virtual with the real.

Nature is hard-wired into us from birth. So we can never turn off the fundamental connections between us, the earth and other living things, our need for our senses take it all in and be nurtured, taught and inspired by it. But we can and do forget how vital those influences are to our physical, mental and spiritual well-being.

REAL, LIVE…LIFE  
For each excuse one might have for not turning off the incessant virtual-reality deceit and actually getting out there in Nature, the potential benefit outweighs manyfold our tendency—or should I say our conditioned response—not to. Because Nature does not exploit; Nature cares for and teaches human beings—especially little ones—in the most amazing ways:

• By facing risk, we learn caution, creativity, patience…
• By learning about our environment, we learn about ourselves.
• By facing new experiences, we get in touch with the timeless.
• By surrounding ourselves with the vast, the complex, we learn of our true place in it all, at the same time insignificant and scary-powerful.
• By tackling challenges we didn’t think we could overcome, we learn about our capacity.
• By learning how little control we have, we learn about letting go.
• By escaping our culture’s complex, hurried, embattled, often alienating influences, we discover the timeless, boundless, totally-authentic original community to which every living organism on earth shares an equal claim.

Before we willingly concede yet more of our own reality to this media-mad, “connected,” “content” culture, let’s stop, take a deep breath and think deeply about what remains in our lives that still is real, and decide—before it’s decided for us—where we draw the line.

“The sensory cacophony (of virtual reality experiences like the Oculus Rift headset) is so uncanny and extraterrestrial to suggest to the organism a deadly threat.”
VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN

* Sources FamilyEducation.com   /  BBC