Nine Life Lessons I've Learned from Dogs

I’m taking a small detour from tracing my ancestry (I will do another post on this soon) to share a little about what dogs have taught me. I’m fast approaching a year of walking dogs and this has been on my mind! 

Growing up I used to dog sit for neighbors and friends all the time. But in the last (almost) year of walking dogs professionally, I’ve learned so much more than I ever thought I could. When I started my dog walking job, I was excited. I was excited to be around animals and the joy they bring into the world. I thought this would be an easy, relaxing job that would leave me with creative energy at the end of the day to work on my own business. What I didn’t expect was the steep learning curve, emotional work, and initiation into a more raw experience with animals than I had ever experienced.

There were many moments in the first two months of walking dogs that I questioned my ability to do this job. I often left work feeling emotionally drained and frustrated that I wasn’t understanding the dogs. What I quickly realized is that humans and dogs are more alike, and more different, than I had thought. We are so similar in that each of us has experiences that shape how we interact with the world and shape our experiences. Like us, dogs have traumas whether it’s being abused or malnourished or microtraumas like not having their emotional, mental, or physical needs met day after day. Like us, they get triggered, they get scared, they react. 

Having worked with people (and myself) through energy healing these things are not new to me. What was new though was that these challenges presented themselves within the context of body language that I hadn’t ever learned and in contexts where I didn’t know how to communicate with the dogs. 

And on top of that, I took things personally. I thought- I am a bad dog walker because they didn’t want to leave the building to go outside or because they hid under the couch when I met them for the first time. These first two months really felt like a test. And they taught me some foundational lessons which I am still unraveling today. 

Here are nine things dogs have taught me so far about life. 

Respect is everything. 

Without respect there is frustration, anger, bitterness, fear. A relationship built on these things isn’t a relationship at all. The dog doesn't feel safe. You don’t feel safe. Every dog, and being on this Earth, has experiences, a view through which they see the world, a role to play within it. When we approach relationships with the baseline that everyone has deep value and has their own wisdom, we create relationships that help each other grow, thrive, and live up to our best potential instead of tear each other down.

Work on yourself first.

One of the first things that became clear to me is that the biggest changes I could make were to myself. Walking dogs exposed the things I wasn’t confident about. I wasn’t confident in my decisions, I wasn’t confident in speaking up for the dogs. I wondered- am I doing this right? I was afraid to make mistakes. Once I started addressing my own stuff, everything followed more easily. We are energetic beings. When your energy is in a good place, dogs, animals, other humans feel safer.

Listening is critical. 

When you are always speaking there is no space to tune in. Tuning in requires us to surrender to the present and the presence of those around us. When we do this, we pick up on cues that we otherwise would miss. With dogs, listening is often very visual. When we don’t listen, we miss the stress lick lips, raised hair, anxious whale eyes. Listening allows us to adjust, adapt, meet in the middle.

Learning is a lifelong responsibility. 

Sometimes with people, like dogs, to really be able to listen, we must first learn the language of the other person. With dogs, this means learning subtle body language, paying attention to visual cues. With people, this might look like getting to know how different people interact in different situations. Taking it upon ourselves to be knowledgeable about how we impact other’s lives and what we can do about it. Or maybe literally learning a different language. We are always changing and so are those around us. This means when we show up as lifelong learners we stay open to becoming more of what we need for ourselves and others. 

Mistakes are okay. 

We all fuck up. Don’t take it personally. Learn from it and let it go.

Fun is important. 

Challenge and learning without fun sucks. When we find ways to bring joy into our lives, even if they are small things like lighting a candle, taking a bath, eating a favorite food, or walking in the woods, these things motivate us to keep going, to keep showing up even when things get hard. Plus when we are having fun, the people around us are having fun too!

All living beings are way smarter than we give them credit for. 

As humans, we often have the tendency to underestimate all life outside of ourselves. And oftentimes we also underestimate our own smarts and tenacity. When provided an opportunity that supports what the dog needs, dogs learn very quickly. They can pick up a trick in minutes. They make associations. They know when we are feeling sad, angry, upset and oftentimes comfort us. Dogs are experiencing whole words of smell and sound that we have no idea about. They often sense things before we do. These things are all forms of genius in their own right. We just need to reframe how we think about “smarts”.

Help create safe spaces and be the voice when others have none.

Many people don’t fully understand dog body language. Sometimes this means you need to tell people to give your dog space, ask them to wait, tell them no, don’t touch the dog. When you are in a position where you stand up for a dog, you are creating safety through repetition. The more you can help assert your dog’s needs, the safer your dog feels to be themselves. We all deserve to feel safe and that we can be ourselves. Standing up for others (and ourselves) helps create safety for everyone. 

The energy of your environment and the people around you influences your energy greatly.

I can often tell how a dog is treated by how they act. Dogs, like us, are sensitive to our environment whether we realize it consciously or not. If our home environment is chaotic, messy, disorganized, lacking any kind of routine and consistency, we lack groundeness and feelings of predictability, become prone to anxiousness and uncertainty. If our environment is tense with anger, we become on edge, get triggered more easily, are in a constant state of dysregulation. Showing up with more confidence and structure changed my walks with the dogs.  Reshaping our environment and the people we surround ourselves with changes our nervous system.

Thank you to all the animal teachers that have come into my life this last year. I am always in awe of how you move about and show up in the world. Thank you for teaching me so much about myself and about life. I wouldn’t be who I am without you!