Bones Would Rain from the Sky: Deepening Our Relationships with Dogs (9 page)

Dynamic quality is unpredictable, and
impossible to replicate. Quite possibly it is the
uniqueness of dynamic quality that makes it so
intense or meaningful for us. Moments of dynamic
quality occur seemingly at random: a
spectacular sunset, a red fox walking out from the
woods to stand gazing into your eyes, the fairyland of a
tree freshly dusted in snow, the sudden arc of a
meteor across the sky. These may be
dramatic moments, but there are others less
dramatic but equally powerful: the sound of a child softly
singing to herself, the silky feel of a dog's ear sliding
between your fingers, the warm pressure of a body curled
lovingly around your own, the sweet smell of rain in
the spring.
Moments of dynamic quality, moments with the
potential to move our very souls, are all around us.
Though unpredictable, they require only one thing
from us in order for us to experience them: We must be
available. Because it resides in your response,
dynamic quality is everywhere you are, if you are
open to the experience, willing to seek it out, interested
and alert to what is happening within and beyond yourself.
Sweepstakes promoters have it all wrong: In life, you
Must be present to win. If we are glued to the nightly
news, we will not see the sunset. We also will not be
available to see our dogs or anyone else we
love. We must actively seek moments of
dynamic quality by being open to and aware of them, by being
present in the moment, by bringing ourselves to the world and through the
world. Every moment of dynamic quality is possible
because of this: You are there, and you are aware.
Is the gaze of a red fox any less piercing if you
are not there to connect with it? Perhaps. But what is
possible when your eyes connect with fox eyes is
possible only with you present and aware. Potential
connections are all around us, yet we sometimes march
through our days without bringing our awareness to each passing
moment, moving in a preset lockstep that answers not
to natural rhythms or even those of our own hearts,
but to some artificial, externally generated beat that we
agree to and abide by. This is not without price:
We miss the moments of authentic connection, the
dynamic moments. Dogs remind us that the only
place that dynamic quality can occur is in the
moment of now.
For those intrigued by the infinite possibilities of
what can happen when we nurture the dynamic
quality of our relationships with dogs and others, the
only requirement is a constant awareness that at every
moment we are choosing to create events of quality.
To do so, we must invest ourselves fully in the moment,
bringing our awareness and curiosity to even the simplest
acts of connection. Nothing in life is free, but
our investment of ourselves is richly rewarded
in profound and moving connections with our dogs, and in
turn, a powerful connection with the natural world around us
and with our deepest selves.

You ask of my companions. Hills, sir, and the
sundown, and a dog as large as myself.
emily Dickinson

In june, the roar of haying equipment fills our
farm's fields. It seems chaotic, this noisy
movement of man and machine, but flowing like a cool
green wake behind the tractor there appears an
orderly row of cut hay heaped gently to dry
awhile before being baled. All day, diesel fumes
hang in sunlit haze over the fields but are gone
with the cooling breezes of evening. A mosquito
buzzes my ear as I walk in the emptiness between the
sweet, wilting piles, thinking of the coming winter when
these simple grasses will fill our cattle's
bellies.
For my dogs, there are no thoughts of cattle or of
winter. They have only a passing interest in the cleared
areas where I walk, but with an intensity that seems
unusual in these familiar fields, they move
along the long piles of hay.
Methodically, they work row after row, tails wagging
furiously then stilled for just a moment as they swallow
something before moving on. I know what they are after, though
I often do not tell visiting guests who think this
scene a most pastoral sight: The dogs are
searching for and eating the hapless victims of haying
season. Mice, birds, snakes, rabbits,
moles, shrews, frogs and voles have all appeared
at times in the drying hay. My dogs have learned that
hay season means a potluck dinner.
But for all their intensity as they search, for all the
delicious (only to dogs) snacks that they find, the
dogs never forget that we are together. Between mouthfuls of
mouse, they glance up to check my progress
through the field. Sometimes, I am content to sit and
watch them scavenge, thinking about stories I have read
of fox and coyote following farmers who are working
to bring in a hay crop; the easy pickings of hay
row cuisine are not a secret known only to my
dogs. But sometimes, I am headed elsewhere and pass
through the hay field only as I must. As I move,
the dogs keep track of me as completely
as I keep track of them. We share this
responsibility of togetherness. Noting that I'm about
to enter the hemlock woods and head to the creek, they
grab one last mystery morsel and race after me.
Though they may range away in search of a
tantalizing scent or to furiously mark where the
coyotes have left their messages in the night, the
dogs circle back to me as I choose another
trail or stop to investigate a small patch of
hepatica growing under the hemlocks' shade. We
are, at every step, together, without the need for words, bound
by the heart's invisible leash, unmistakably
connected.

Baseball great Yogi Berra summed it up rather
neatly: "You can observe a lot by just watching." And
he was right-few things tell me as much about the quality
of the connection between a person and a dog as what can be
observed as they just walk along together. This sounds so
simple comto be with a dog as we walk. What I
mean by "with" is a connection that is not easily
defined but that is evident in its absence. It is a
choice of two to be together, not a matter of tying
someone to you with leash and collar.
At my seminars, I make a routine
practice of standing where I can watch people and their dogs
entering the building; at home, I watch clients
take their dogs from the car and walk them toward me.
If there were a single snapshot moment that
encapsulates a relationship, it might be simply
this: how a person and a dog walk together.
My friend Rosemary has driven from Illinois
to spend a few days at our farm with her four dogs.
She is tired from the long drive, and after hugging us,
asks if she might walk her dogs. As she opens
the side door of her van, I can hear her talking
quietly to the excited dogs. Although they are good
travelers, even the best of dogs grows weary of
confinement after fifteen hours on the road. As she leans
into the van and gathers their leashes, I see
Teddy's nose appear over her shoulder, nostrils
flaring as he drinks in the farm scents. Poking out
past Rosemary's hip is Zena's black
button of a nose, and though I can see only a little
of the graying muzzle, I can tell that she is
wriggling in the delight of arrival. With all leashes
securely attached, Rosemary steps back. The
dogs stand eager but contained, waiting for her quiet

"okay." When it comes, they flow from the
van, a river of feet and tails, ears and eyes and
noses busy trying to take in the whole farm at
once. Despite their excitement, they do not lose
track of Rosemary, nor do they pull on their
leashes. As she shuts the van door, they glance up
at her as if to ask, "Are you ready yet?"
While they wait, impatient but polite, she
carefully organizes the leashes in her hand and
says, "Let's go, guys." And off they go, together
in every sense of the word.
Not surprisingly, Rosemary has an excellent
relationship with her dogs-in every moment of her
interactions with them, she makes it clear to them and
to all watching that she is truly with them. In turn,
they are decidedly with her, whether in the quiet
empty moments or when working on a task. Any
difficulties, when they arise, are a matter of
miscommunication between Rosemary and the dog or an
inability on her part or theirs to work together in just that
way, not a failure of clear leadership or the
result of conflicts in the relationship itself
Walking the dog is the stuff of cartoons for good
reason. The eternal question: "Who is walking whom?"
is amusing only on the surface, just as jokes about
henpecked husbands are only superficially
funny. Examined at a deeper level, there
isn't anything funny at all about relationships or
leashes taut with tension. Perhaps the humor arises from
a wry recognition that relationships are not always what
we'd like them to be, from our unstated relief that others
have the same difficulties with their dogs or spouses
or bosses or children that we do. But we are
uncomfortably aware-if we take a moment to think
about it-that an unbalanced or frustrating relationship
is no laughing matter.
How important is the quality of connection? How
critical is it that we learn on the most basic
level to truly walk with a dog? It may be, quite
literally, a matter of life and death. The leading
cause of death in dogs in Western countries is
behavior-unacceptable, uncontrollable, inap
propriate behavior. Not disease. Not being hit by a
car. Not neglect or abuse (though an argument could
be made that a failure to train a dog so that he can
act appropriately is precisely a form of
neglect and abuse). If we fail to develop a
high quality of connection with our dogs, we
may fail them in the most terrible of ways, and they
may pay for our failure with their lives. Whether
we care to admit it or not, we reveal a good deal
about our relationships with our dogs in the simple act
of walking together. Do we excuse our dogs"
behavior? Ignore them? Helplessly allow ourselves
to be towed along like so much baggage? Are we really
with them as we walk along, attentive to their comments and
interests, ready to help or defend or reassure
them as needed? Trainer Sherry Holm has a
lovely way of looking at the simple act of
walking with a dog: Is there a balance between dog and
person, or is the energy flowing too heavily in one
direction? Pulling on lead, at a very fundamental
level, is an exchange of energy. When two are
moving together in harmony, there is a balance that gently
sways back and forth across the two. Moving together
toward a common goal or with a mutual purpose,
there is no pull of energy one way or the other.
Imagine that everywhere you went with a human friend, you had
To hold his hand and he yours. Now imagine that at every
step, he was pulling hard. Would you want to go for walks with such a
friend? What we would say to such a friend is this:
Why can't you just be with me?
Just walk nicely here, by my side, and we'll go
together.
Consider how the connection with your dog feels. Do you
feel as if you are being towed? As if you must struggle
to guide or direct the dog? Does the thought of
walking with your dog bring up feelings of joy or is
there some frustration? It is considerably annoying
to walk with a constant struggle, and few of us like having
our arm pulled (sometimes quite hard) by our canine friends.
Yet with our dogs, we may think that saying "Just
walk nicely by my side" is not possible, or
even if we wish it were, we don't know how to say
it. If we view the leash as merely a restraint that
keeps the dog safe, we may view pulling on the
lead as the end product of the conflict between what the
dog wants to do and what the leash allows him to do.
We resign ourselves to the struggle, never realizing that
it is not necessary, unaware that we are perhaps undermining the very
quality of our relationship.

Pulling on lead is, for me, a fundamental
issue that both reflects on and affects the
dogs to human relationship on many levels.
Looked at within the context of the overall relationship,
pulling on lead reveals disturbances in the quality
of attention given and received at both ends of the lead and
says something about the degree of togetherness at work between
dog and handler. I do not know anyone who enjoys being
pulled around by a dog. While dogs do pull, I
doubt that they find the experience enjoyable-it's hard
to believe that being gagged and choked is enjoyable. But
lacking our perspective and our ability to change the
situation, they may believe it is an inescapable
part of being on leash, especially since we most
obligingly play our part.
It takes two to tango, and it takes two
to pull. A frustrated student once told me that
her dog always pulled, no matter what. Unable
to resist such an opening, I sweetly asked,
"Always? No matter what?"
She nodded vigorously. "No matter what! It
drives me crazy." When I asked if the dog
pulled even when he was off leash and running around in
her yard, she looked at me with disgust. "Of course
he doesn't pull then." So then I persisted, he
only pulls when he's on lead. What if you
drop the lead? Does he still pull? Now a bit
annoyed by this line of questioning, she answered
sharply, "Of course not. I have to be holding the
leash." She stopped as the realization hit her that in
order for her dog to pull, he had to have something or
someone to pull against. It had never dawned on her that
she might be contributing to the problem; she had viewed
this solely as the dog's problem.
Any of us would take a dim view of someone who was
dragging their dog or a child down the street-it is an
act that speaks to the person's insensitivity to or
lack of respect for the dog or child they are towing. But
we don't think twice about the dog whose person
allows him to pull them down the street. We don't
think about the lack of respect implicit in the act
of pulling, or the lack of leadership that allows it.
Simply put, we may move through life spending
far too much time simply tied to our dogs by the length
of our leash, not bound to them through an investment of our
attention.
At this most simple level of moving together, we
reveal the courtesy and respect at work in the
quiet unplanned moments of life. I am never as