Namaste

I recently started a yoga practice. By all means, please take a moment and imagine clueless beginner yogi me: chubby and only mildly coordinated, still regaining full use of my left foot after crushing it earlier this year, trying to find inner peace (and not fall over) in a house full of curious cats and dogs. You probably underestimate the hilarity. I have had dogs gradually melt across my mat and a cat grapple my calf while I sought the proper balance in Warrior One. I have had retired service dogs decide I am clearly in need of help. It’s been a show.

But it’s been good. I’m coaxing my body to remember the suppleness of long ago ballet lessons and the centered strength of fearlessly running down curbs. It’s bringing me back to a connection with my body that’s too easy to lose in my busy modern life. It’s true self care.

Before I started practicing yoga, the short list of things I knew about it included the word “namaste.” It’s not surprising; it’s so evident in yoga of all kinds that in many circles it has become a shorthand for New Age pretension. At first I felt self conscious saying it, and sometimes still do, but that feeling begins to fall away as I form a deeper connection to just what namaste is. It’s a greeting at times, a benediction at others, but more than that, it is a philosophy that anchors the spiritual roots of yoga and branches out to brush against every other part of life.

The philosophy of namaste means “the divine in me bows to the divine in you.” It’s a process of recognizing that the same universal energy exists in all of us. It’s about looking at other people and seeing the soul instead of the body. It’s a quest to find light in everyone around you. It’s a beautiful way to approach the world.

I think that namaste should come naturally to those of us standing on the “animal people” end of the pet owner spectrum. It’s just another interpretation of that moment when we look into an animal’s eyes and see a soul looking back where so many others see “just an animal.” It echoes the empathy we have for our dogs’ internal lives and they have for ours. It recognizes the spark of connection that draws us so close to our chosen family. To be honest, I think it can be easier to embrace namaste with animals than with humans--there are so many fewer words to get in the way, fewer expectations, less ego. Dogs simply are themselves, and they encourage the same in us. They are as eager to find genuine connection as we are, and far less afraid.

The connection is joy; quick and bright. The love is natural, almost effortless, but deeper consideration of namaste brings a responsibility to light. If we can see the soul in our dogs, feel it, we have to respect it. Namaste calls for us to bow to the divine in others, to humble the self to allow compassion, empathy, the reverence that is inseparable from true love. Dogs are not objects; they are not automatons; they are not extensions of us or expressions of our ambitions. They are their own souls, complete in themselves, and if we claim to love them we must allow them that.

I seek to always respect the soul in my dogs. For me, that means meeting their fear with support, their frustration with compassion, their joy with enthusiasm, and their devotion with gratitude. I don’t try to master them, because who am I to hold any soul but my own? I can’t step away from them, because I promised them they would not be alone when I took them into my family. I stand beside them, our hearts and minds growing ever closer as we find a balance that allows both souls to live together, bending where needed to balance and respect each other.

It’s kind of like yoga.

Yoga’s a lot like love.

The Silver Lining of a DM Diagnosis

This has been a sad week in the broader family of Leonberger people (or, as my fiance lovingly and only half-jokingly calls us, the Leo Cult). Four people in my sphere of acquaintance have lost their dogs this week, three at single-digit ages.

There’s a heart-clenching fear when you read things like that; a sudden realization of just how momentary the heartbeat at your side can be. It makes you want to immediately cling to your dog and whisper in their ear, “Please stay.” Deaths have hit me harder since we reached the point where most of my dogs are seniors; harder still since Ginny’s degenerative myelopathy diagnosis. The fear is more visceral; my empathy for the grief sharper and more immediate.

I was on my lunch break at work, some seven and a half hours into the fifteen-hour last shift of a grueling week, when I scrolled through Facebook and saw the name of a dog I had loved (from afar) since he was a puppy followed by the awful finality of paired dates and literally choked on grief. I felt the sudden urge to get up and leave, to tell my team, “I’m really sorry, but I really need my dog.” One might think fatigue had something to do with the tears I couldn’t hold in, but I know better; I’d have cried even more at home. I sat at that conference table, before a litter of paperwork and tupperware, and cried until I could drag air into an aching chest. That was my grief; I know it pales in comparison to his family’s.

The shock makes it worse, I think. So often we have little to no warning before they leave us. It was that way with Pickles; he was playing in the yard and half an hour later he was gone. It takes loss and twists it, makes it even more unreal and traumatic. I found myself thinking, dumbfounded, that Rutger couldn’t die--he was fine! I never saw any sign he was sick. But my disbelief didn’t made that second date go away.

That was when I got to thinking that there are many worse ways to lose your dog than degenerative myelopathy. DM is, by its nature, a gradual loss. You see it coming. The diagnosis is a shock, but you have time to adjust, time to understand, time for your grief to gentle. It’s been two months (almost to the day) since I looked at my friend and said, “I feel like she’s getting worse,” and she replied with a solemn, certain, “Yes.” Two months since we loaded her up to go to the ER. Two months since I learned not being able to ascertain back pain could be a very bad thing. Two months since she told me, as gently as possible, that the ataxia wasn’t going to get better. Two months since I realized my dog, my baby, my sweetest girl, was headed for the Bridge.

It’s been a long two months.

But that two months has been time. It’s been time to get used to the idea that our days are limited; time for so many “one more time”s. When the time comes I can know I won’t regret wasted days, because we know what’s coming, so we aren’t wasting any.

That’s not to say it’s easy. It hurts every time Ginny stumbles; I’m afraid every time she gets ahead of me and charges down the stairs like she’s healthy, still not realizing her back legs are failing her. I still whisper and cry into her fur, because not knowing if she’ll see Christmas or have another birthday is constantly there in the background of our days. But then we cuddle up and go to sleep and wake up and look, there’s another day with Ginny. Another smile. Another time she comes up behind me while I’m standing in the kitchen and rests her silky head against my thigh, asking to be stroked if I can get a hand free. I always find that I can.

Jeannette Walls wrote, “One of the hardest things you will ever have to do, my dear, is grieve the loss of a person who is still alive.” I don’t know if that’s true in this context. I know it hurts, but it doesn’t hurt more than the sharp, breathless shock of sudden loss. I don’t know if grieving now will make our eventual parting any easier. But I know that I am grateful for the time, and for the chance to find out.

Starting Over

If there's one thing training has taught me, it's that when something isn't working, you need to step away, reevaluate, and come back to it when you feel you're ready. I liked the idea of blogging, but I wasn't ready.

Now I think I am. It's been a few (okay, more than a few) years. I'm older, the dogs are older, hopefully we're all a bit wiser, and maybe we have something worthwhile to say.

So here we go again!