Bizarro Dog World...

When Ellie and I leave the house, she focuses intently on just about anything except me. When we are in the house and I'm trying to get work done on the computer, suddenly I'm the most interesting thing in the world to her, and she'll do anything to get my attention, including tossing toys at me, grabbing my hand in her mouth and diving for my heels.

If I'm puttering, doing dishes, moving around, Ellie sits or lays quietly, watching me. Once I get quiet, she revs up. If I absolutely have to work on grading online papers, she gets almost frantic with wanting me up and moving.

It's like living in Bizarro World.

But here's an asute observation from my husband; He says Ellie is mirroring my emotional state, and I realize there is something to this. Truth be told, there are about a million things I'd rather be doing than grading papers, but I rather grimly set to the task. And there is Ellie, frantically working at a kong, and it doesn't look like she's having the least bit of fun. hmmm.

Emotions are subtle things, requiring subtle practices to address.

Next time, flower essences, or how Ellie chooses Vervain and I get the Lotus Cosmos.

Dog Walk Meditation - The Real Deal

Ellie's walks tend to be rather exciting. She directs all of her attention and subsequent energies outward, towards anything that moves. I might as well be a post, and she'd really rather I wasn't there, or, at least, that's my take on it.

Today I tried something different. I'm committed to training in The Yoga Way, which requires a different languaging from me, and checking in with my own habits. I realized that I need to adjust the way that I use the dog training technique known as 'racetracking', where dog and person move in a circle, person as 'moveable post', until the dog self-manages.

What if, instead of calling this racetracking, I call it Walking Companion Meditation? How does that change the way that I view what is happening, and how might that affect Ellie's behavior? How does Walking Companion Meditation affect my expectations and how do my expectations affect the outcome of these training walks?

Thanks, Spanky for Ellie Dog Play

Spanky, the chihuahua, lives across the road and he's blessedly fearless. So Ellie had the chance for some semi-controlled interaction. She acted a little confused by Spanky not running away but coming in for a friendly genital sniff. She wasn't interested, just kept whirling about and then went into a play bow.

Thanks, Spanky.

Still a ways to go...

There is Kafka, spying from around the corner as Ellie demonstrates what it looks like when she's completely disconnected from me and focused on her external object - in this case, Mr. Socks.



All is not lost however.

And so it goes...

Can our bond be just around the corner?

There a few hints of Ellie starting to settle in; the occasional deep satisfying groan while stretching out on the floor, stretching out on the floor closer to us, and today, instead of mouthing my outstretched hand by the chair, some gentle licks without her body in high arousal state.

We've been struck, up to now, by Ellie's intensely 'away from us' focus, not just with her cat chasing, but in general. So these small signs that she is getting comfortable are immensely gratifying.

Small things...

MadGrrrl Ellie, When "Park" goes South

Mad Grrrl Ellie. Observing Ellie over the last weeks, I see how she's nearly always in a state of arousal, a hyper alertness. I have elected to back off going to the park during busy times and work on our loose leash walking near the house, where it's busy enough, but not quite so stimulating. She has some creative and quite devious-seeming tactics for trying to up-end a person while grabbing the leash and running that I suspect worked rather well for her in her past. More on my strategies and tactics for that problem in another post.

My bright idea for Thursday evening was to put Ellie in Park as we were watching television. This training technique works pretty well in a dog training class situation. For clients with disabilities, we can tether the dog to a bolted ring in the floor, and then just leave the dog to it's own devices until the dog makes the choice to settle down. It's been demonstrated that it helps a dog self-manage, which is what I want for Ellie.

She chewed through the nylon leash several times pretty handily. I knotted the broken leash, tried again. After the third chew-through, I finally (sometimes I'm slow) could see this wasn't working at all. I had an old leash with a leather handle and chain, so I tried that. She couldn't chew through it, but she gave it her all, for a long, long time. I sat still and ignored her antics as she gnawed, flipped, wound around, worried, pawed, and basically worked herself into a tizzie.

What to do.

I'd committed to this path, and if I simply gave in, then it's quite likely that this high energy obsessive behavior will continue, or get worse. Once again, I suspect that she was able to outlast her previous owners under quite a few circumstances. I bided my time until I could find one moment of respite where I could reward her by removing the leash restraint. Finally, 45 minutes into the activity (did I mention that Ellie has the ability to be intensely focused for LONG periods of time?), she stopped, and I casually reached down, took her off the leash and we went into another room and just had a little bit of toy toss play time.

That night, she went right into bed, slept late, and has seemed 'quieter', not so manic.

Where's the yoga in this? That's for another post.

Yoga with Ellie: Dog Yoga that's Something Different

Yoga citta vritti nirodha:Yoga is the ability to focus the mind on a chosen object, without distraction. (Reflections on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, T.K.V. Desikachar).

Ellie can be intensely focused, on her toys, on the cats, on passing bicyclists, on dogs far in the distance. In turn, I have to be intensely focused on Ellie's behavior, ready for that 'clickable' moment that rewards Ellie for turning that focus towards me - changing her object of focus.

She does that, and the intensity of the focus ratchets downward as well. I'm still not nearly as interesting her as that passing stranger. Do I want, or need, to be 'the cat'?

Lots of mulling, and many hours, Ellie is helping me develop what it means to be in the Yoga of Relationship with a dog who doesn't understand relationship, whose life has been about, well, we don't know.

Hasta luego. We'll be back.