Owning a Dog

It's 4am. Pip woke me an hour or so ago crying at the bedroom door. It is not unusual, her waking me, she/we go out for wee. But this time the hall door was pushed closed and she couldn't nose it open (back towards her) because she has one of those buckets on her head, to stop her licking her stitches in her wound from her toe amputation last Monday.

Just as I woke to the sounds of her crying and the bucket hitting the door an almighty clap of thunder shook the house. "Oh shit," I said as I got up. I'd let her out at 2am for a pee, in the carport as it was raining heavily, and I realized this was going to be a thunder episode, something I had dreaded happening while we were doing the bucket thing until the stitches come out a week from now and the threat of infection is over. Normally she hides in the toilet when there's thunder around in the gap between the toilet bowl and the wall, but she couldn't get in there with the bucket so I took it off.

Lib starts back at work today, she'll wake at 6, after 3 weeks leave. I didn't want to go back to bed and leave Pip in the toilet in case I fell asleep and then she may attack her stitches when her shivering fear subsided. She goes quite manic in thunderstorms as many dogs do. So I sat on the toilet and patted her now and again hoping the storm would pass quickly. I had the exhaust fan on, the noise seems to comfort her, overriding the thunder a little. After a quarter hour or so I thought the noise of the fan may be keeping Lib awake so I turned it off and left the toilet, shut the hall door, and walked Pip up and down the house carrying her like a parent does a colicky baby. She weighs 8kg so my arm soon tired so I'd stop and sit still holding her on my lap. She struggled and shivered, so back to walking, then sitting, walking till the thunder had gone.

I put the bucket back on her head and came here to the computer after making some toast and coffee. Pip lay on the floor near the hall door, quietly.

I did the Facebook thing, not wanting to go back to bed and disturb Lib again. If I did creep back quietly Pip may disturb us again anyway. In the quiet solitude listening to the steady rain on the roof, I came across a post by a psychologist talking about consciousness. He was referring to the current situation where many people are isolated and worried and literally thinking and talking themselves into unhappiness and depression. His message; drop the thoughts of what might be in the future, all the scary scenarios our brains conjure up, and be in the present, wherever you are, and look around at all that is there, be aware of your breathing, absorb every sight and sound. In other words, focus on what is, in the now, not on thoughts of bad things are or what might be. Focusing on the present, is where happiness is; playing with the dog, watching a movie, playing a game, having sex, gardening, you name it. Thoughts can bring us unhappiness. There's a difference between the situation as it IS, in our NOW, to what the mind says may be.

He concluded saying to realize this empowers us. Once we are aware we know what Shakespeare meant when he wrote, "Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so".

As I listened to this guy, the penny dropped for me. It's the same message, presented differently,as that in a book I'm reading but was struggling with - "Loving What Is" by Byron Katie. She uses four questions in what she calls 'The Work' applied to a problem or thought that causes stress. It's not the problem that causes suffering; it's our thinking about the problem. 'The Work' is a way of losing painful thoughts, allows you to let go. If you stress over what your mind says shouldn't be, be it politics, relationships whatever, you punishing yourself unnecessarily. Accept what is, and you free yourself to be happy. I think I've got it.

"It is what it is". That annoying often used phrase of recent times will now no longer annoy me.