Things my dog taught me
(that might just apply to you too)
In our better moments, we know to savour time with our loved ones. After all, we can never know how long we will have with them. With dogs, the reminder is more immediate; their lives are so short. After a tough visit to the vet this week, we know now how precious and brief our remaining time with Rolo really is.
I can’t imagine how I will hold the sadness of losing this little life that has been a part of our home for eleven years. He is as old as my business. The very first thing I did as a self-employed person was drive with Tom to the collie rescue centre, “Just to visit,” I said (but the brand new dog bed in the boot suggested otherwise.) I have a vivid memory of Rolo bouncing up on to the five foot brick wall of the entrance when we arrived, his face full of expectant energy - “You’re here! Finally!”
Rolo had two failed placements before he came to us. And two weeks into his stay we started to understand why. If you read my book, you’ll hear the story in the final chapter. Let’s just say, life with a reactive rescue is not an easy road.
But sometimes the hardest things become our greatest gifts. I would not be me now without the lessons hard won from navigating life with Rolo. And as we savour every aspect of him, and his evolution over this last decade, I wanted to pass on a few of the things that he has taught me. Things that are clearly true for Rolo, and might just be a little bit true for all of us.
Life is scary, but we get braver.
Sometimes everything is scary, and it’s impossible to not kick off in fear. But when we keep turning up, things start to feel calmer and we notice that things really do change over time. And soon we’re doing things we would never have dreamed were possible.
Remember to stop and sniff.
There’s always time to pause. And when we do, and feel the air and notice the ground. Something inside shifts and settles just a bit. Notice that exhale that comes after the inhale.
When we step out the door for a walk, these days, his old slow pace means that we often stand outside for a moment, taking in the world. It took me a while to stop resisting, and try and coax him to get moving - places to be, things to do. Now I just accept his pace and see in his wisdom how much more there is in the world when we pause. The sniff is more important than the destination.
Making friends is hard, but worth it.
Rolo has always struggled to greet dogs and not fuck it up. But he also loves dogs. And sometimes he stays calm and they play together. And afterwards he stops and stands there with a look of such delight, just processing the joy that is having friends and being together. We don’t always get it right. But we keep trying.
Lean into the love.
There is infinite capacity to love. We are all so worthy of it. Stretch out your paws, feel into it, accept it and give it freely. There’s more where that came from. Love is part of how we communicate, how we heal, how we grow.
We need a lot of love for each other and for ourselves. To approach the hard things, to share the struggles together, and to just feel joyful.
There are many more things that I have learned by trying to support a reactive rescue dog, and many have informed how I help the families that I meet in speech therapy, starting with compassion, empathy and respect. But in the interests of brevity, I’ll leave that for the book.
Rolo is such a part of my life and my learning as a therapist, that he’s also right there on the front cover (if you look closely). This was not a decision made by me, but by the illustrator, Victoria Escandell, who knows us both well 💛
Dogs don’t get very long in this world. What’s a decade? With seven years crammed in to one, if it was me I’d be fretting about trying to Do It All. But dogs know. To stop and savour it all. To lean into the love and the pleasure of life, of tonguing out the end of the yoghurt pot, or full commitment to the bright red frisbee, or that stick hiding in the roots of the forest stream.
This moment is all we have. Savour it.
With love,
Bryony Rust
SaLT by the Sea
PS. Do you have a pet? Do they give you a renewed perspective on life? I’d love to hear.
