These past two weeks, I’ve been walking a point of creating a different relationship with one of the dogs on the farm. I actually didn’t have much of a relationship with him to begin with.
I was asked to dogsit a few hours at a time these past two weeks in another house and so with different dogs. I get along with most animals on the farm very well, especially the dogs – who will usually greet me with crazy wagging tails and won’t let me go until I’ve given them all some nice big rubs. All except for one… Stout. He’ll usually greet me with big warning barks. Sure, other dogs will sometimes do the same when I suddenly appear, but I’ll present my hand for them to sniff and then it goes to the tail wagging and rubbing scenario I described just now. But not with Stout – it’s not the same each time, but generally – he will growl when I present my hand – then when he is okay with my hand close to him, I’ll rub him, which gives rise to another growl. So in comparison to the other dogs, there’s never been that ‘ooooh heeeeey – it’s you!!! HIIIII!!’
So – when dog-sitting and spending time with Stout, I realized that I really don’t have much of a relationship with him and I realized that I had used that as an excuse to be and remain uncomfortable around him, keeping that distance between us.
Now – once upon a time, I had a huge fear of dogs, any dog. But I kind of didn’t want to admit that, so what I would say to people was: “It’s not that I’m afraid of dogs, I’m just afraid of the ones I don’t know” – lol – which, was basically all dogs, because we didn’t have dogs and no one in my family or friends-circle did. It’s like – in my mind – I pictured myself owning a dog and enjoying it very much, but any dog I meet, that I don’t personally know, I would just be afraid of, because he might just unpredictably snap at me and I wouldn’t see it coming, because… I don’t know this dog.
So – that same fear would come up whenever I would come into Stout’s space, where he would bark or growl at me. If one of my own dogs would do so – I would simply direct it and ground them – but here, there was a fear that, he might actually bite and I didn’t feel comfortable to ‘call his bluff’ and remain directive and stable. So in dog-sitting and spending more time with him, I realized how I was going in circles within my reasoning as to ‘why I didn’t have a relationship with Stout’:
I don’t have a relationship with him
Because he growls and barks at me
And I become scared of him
And don’t feel comfortable to direct him
Because I don’t have a relationship with him lol
At the same time, I saw another justification being that ‘well, I just don’t have many moments that I spend time with him to be able to create a relationship with him’ – when actually, looking at it self-honestly – it was more a point of making sure our interactions were brief because I felt uncomfortable within it.
So, in not having that excuse this time as I was dogsitting for extended periods of time and in seeing the main points in my circular reasoning being my own fear and within the fear, holding back from directing myself and stout – I knew exactly what to do – taking my focus off of the apparent problem as ‘I don’t have a relationship with him’ to my actual points of responsibility. I’ll share more about ‘how’ I walked this point in my next post.
To be continued…
