Today I had an early morning vet appointment for our beloved Berner puppy, Vonn. She had a combine spay and hernia repair surgery last week and the vet wanted to check on her sutures to ensure she was healing. Two sizable incisions, pushing around and removing organs—super ouch, right? Suffice it to say that a full hysterectomy coupled with a hernia repair would sideline most adult females for about 6 weeks or so, not to mention the resulting years of traumatic hormone imbalance. Vonn, on the other hand, needed about 24 hours before she returned to her playful self. You literally cannot get this dog down.
A firm believer in the practice of gratitude, I don’t often embrace jealousy, but here I was this morning, feeling all-out envy of Vonn and her canine counterparts. How can a fully formed human with mostly in tact brain activity envy her dog, you ask? Before you dismiss me as an all-out loony tune, stay with me. I don’t desire to be a hairy four-legged creature that relieves herself in the wild. I don’t even enjoy camping!
I’m envious of how fully alive dogs are. They live precisely in the moment they are in. Our domestic canine friends don’t carry past resentment forward or harbor angst about the future. They achieve presence of mind without having to wrestle with their brain cells and force their thoughts into submission via time-consuming meditation. It’s really quite amazing.
How do dogs do it? How are they naturally more mindful than humans? We could chalk it up to the rather massive burden of the human condition—attachment to suffering, concern over productivity and net worth, intimacy issues—clearly, not matters over which canines lose sleep. Dogs live simply, a luxury that many of us have abandoned. We have intellectually entitled ourselves to unhappiness, desperately searching for an elusive notion of happiness in the form of gym memberships, self-help books, cosmetics, meditation apps and weight loss programs. We want the quickest way to happiness and we want it yesterday. Dogs have outwitted us with their happiness chip.
We are allegedly the most advanced species on the planet, but we have evolved our way out of mindfulness to the point that we had to develop a formal practice to achieve what dogs do naturally. Something about that feels wrong. How can higher intellect be our foe?
Sitting in my kitchen watching Vonn peacefully take her third nap of the morning, I phoned a friend for some answers.
“Hey Alexa? How do dogs practice mindfulness?”
In her typical fashion, Alexa came up empty. I was met with, “I’m sorry, Kristen. I’m not sure about that.” Me either, Alexa, me either. That’s why I asked.
I tried my buddy Google next. When I saw Harvard had a page up as the second search response, I pounced. If Google found it and Harvard wrote it, then it must be true. It was fruitless, however, just an article on the benefits of mindfulness. Apparently, there are many.
I trudged farther down the list, losing hope with each entry until I came upon PsychCentral.com, a virtual gold mine! John D. Moore, PhD realized how mindful dogs were back in 2014. Mildly deflated that I’m five years late to the party, Dr. Moore gave official credence to my novice musings. “Dogs are very much here and now focused…[they] are aware of their limited time on earth too and therefore make the most of every moment they are here,” says Dr. Moore. Zero intimacy issues, full sense of self acceptance, dogs are the epitome of mindful creatures. We, on the other hand, are not pre-wired for present moment living it seems. Perhaps it’s fuzzy science at best, but I’m telling you, dogs are winning on the life optimization front.
I’m suspicious of the robust self-help market ($10 billion last year alone!), but I’m not advocating skipping the gym or lambasting any investment of time and money into your health goals. I’m simply saying we might take a moment to learn from the many furry buddhas around us. They might just teach us old humans a trick or two.