It\’s one of the worst feelings in the world…

Picture this.  It\’s 4:45 am, my bladder has woken me up. I need to pee. It\’s warm and cosy under the blankets, but needs must!

I drag myself out of bed. It\’s dark, the birds are just starting to sing. I\’m on autopilot, half asleep. All I want to do is to have a pee and crawl back into bed.

Then I step in something- it\’s cold, it\’s wet, it\’s squidgy, it\’s all gone in between my toes. And then the smell hits my nostrils. EWWWWW!

It\’s dog poo. A soft, upset tummy crap on my wooden floorboards, and I have managed to find the middle of it with my foot. Couldn\’t have been more on target if it was bright daylight and I\’d been aiming to step in it.

I gotta tell you, this woke me up very, very quickly. I gimped my way to the bathroom door, turned on the light, and while squinting and trying not to smell the stench, I turned on the shower, washing the crap off.

I got my foot clean, dried it off, then gathered some cleaning spray and a roll of toilet paper. I squatted on the floor, cleaning up the mess.

Then I looked over at Pearl. Now historically, when this has happened I have gotten angry, and then projected that anger towards Pearl with tone of voice, body language. But today I looked at her, lying there, looking miserable, and something shifted inside of me.

Instead, I just felt sorry for her, compassion for her, and acceptance that there was nothing to blame her for. She needed to go, she had an upset gut, I was asleep. If there is a door open, she never, ever poos inside.

So if I did get upset with her, then I\’d only be making things worse for her. I would have (as I have in the past) discharged or dumped some of my \’stuff\’ onto her. Not healthy for either of us, but particularly not for Pearl.

I am absolutely sure that Pearl\’s \’accident\’ is directly related to her being affected by what has been happening for me. 

She is a sensitive old girl. And my nervous system has been fried with the trauma, work, stress, etc. She can feel that!

I don\’t like to use the language of pets \’taking on\’ their human\’s stuff. That can often lead to a human beating themselves up, guilt etc. However, our animals are always going to be affected by our state of being. That\’s simply inevitable.

What can you do about this, to minimise the harmful impact of your stress and \’stuff\’ on your pets?  More about that in a minute…

I\’ve had some interesting days in the week or so leading up to this event. Some deep personal challenges with a blow up on a group I am a member of on Facebook that triggered some old trauma from being psychologically abused by a spiritual teacher (some years ago now).

Another instance where I have been doing my level best with a customer service issue, but things out of my control glitched, leading to intense dissatisfaction for them and stress for me.

Having three fillings done (big ones) last week, with all the stress of that and then some serious follow-up pain and sensitivity.

Then I was having a long conversation with my Love last night, unpacking all of this, trying to make sense of it, processing, and talking.

Out of the blue, she said: \”Can I ask you a question?\”

\”Of course you can…\”

\”You know when you call Mitzi names?\”

(Side note: I did do this now and then- call him a \’little bugger\’ and things like that. Things that if I said them to a human with the same energy and body language, would not feel nice.)

It came out in conversation that she had asked me to stop doing this in the past, that it was uncomfortable for her, and I\’d brushed it off. Not listened.

Realisation is an interesting thing. 

And I realised what I was doing in that moment. I also realised that I need to stop that behaviour towards Mitzi. Because that has been having an energetic impact on the little fella, and not in a good way.

My love then invited me to explore why, what might be driving my behaviour. After some exploration, she asked me if it might be that my \’control\’ shadow could be active here. I had to agree that this was true.

(Side note: Shadow can be defined as anything we hide, repress or deny about ourselves or our behaviour.)

Now we all have shadows. There\’s no escaping that. And this shadow is one I\’m very familiar with – I grew up on a cattle property in North Queensland, and the culture in training animals was very much of using force to make animals do what you wanted them to do.

The basic core message was that animals are here to do what humans want them to do, and that it\’s perfectly acceptable to use pain and fear to control them.

I got taught this dynamic from birth. Seeing men \’giving dogs a hiding\’, watching horses get broken in with ropes and hobbles and whips. Being taught how to break horses in with these brutal methods. Branding and castrating and dehorning calves without anaesthetic.

I\’ve been unlearning it all ever since. But it is still a part of me. And like all shadows, the better you know it, the more subtle it gets. You always have to be aware that it\’s there. And the more you accept it, the more you can outgrow it.

This tendency to dominate animals runs deep, deep in our human culture. So it pays to be aware that it\’s likely that many people will have this shadow in relation to animals to some degree. A more extreme example is people who use prong or shock collars to train dogs.

Every shadow behaviour is like a coin with two opposite faces. There will always be an opposite polarity to consider. This means you can go the opposite way with your dogs (or cats, or in some cases other humans).

This might look like completely force-free, only positive rewards, never asking a dog to do the slightest thing that they don\’t want to. Giving dogs food whenever they ask, even if they are fat. Or at the extreme, an anxious, overexcited out of control dog with no manners, no respect for the personal space of humans, who may even bite.

Neither extreme of this is in the animal\’s best interest. And the only beings who can make a difference here with these sort of shadow (subconscious) dynamics and behaviours are the human beings.

That would be you! And me, of course.

I\’ve made changes last night and today. I chose to stop calling Mitzi names. I saw that even though it seemed like something small, it\’s actually huge, and very important.

I\’ve seen a deeper, more subtle layer of a behaviour that will improve my pets\’ lives when I outgrow it. And that\’s why my response to lovely old Pearl was so different this morning.

It\’s not easy to see these sort of dynamics, let alone outgrow them and change subconscious habits of behaviour.

Support helps you make these changes in a healthy and sustainable way. Plus, you often need someone from outside your bubble to help you gain awareness of what you need to change in yourself to help your pets. As you can see from this story, I\’m devoted to finding better ways to be me, for the sake of my animals. And I\’d like to help you do the same!

This is why I\’m soon launching a brand new year-long program – Holistic (Pet) Health Mastery. This program is designed to help you make the changes in your life that will improve your animal\’s happiness and well-being. There are a series of 10 webinars to help you grow into the human your pets need most, and an opportunity for regular private life coaching sessions with me to help you along the way.

If you\’d like to change your life to make a difference for your pets, contact me about a free discovery call to learn more!