I Meditate with my Dog

Our dog Josie does not like thunderstorms. That’s true for a lot of pups, I know, and there are myriad ways we all try to help our dogs weather the storm (hehehe). There are the Thundershirts®, a snug fitting stretch shell jacket that gives the dog a cozy, secure feeling. We’ve put Josie in her crate (after my lap, her second favorite hang-out) and covered it with a blanket to make it safe and den-like. That works, a little. Sometimes.

Before the 4th of July, when every neighborhood in the US comes under attack by the morons who think it is fun to blow stuff up (yes, I hate fireworks), we asked our vet for chemical help. Dr. Miller, DVM, prescribed trazadone.

In humans, trazadone is used as an anti-depressant. It is in a class of drugs called serotonin receptor antagonists and reuptake inhibitors (SARIs). In short, it helps your body balance your brain chemistry properly. In dogs, it helps with behavioral disorders such as separation anxiety and noise phobia (AHA! You’re saying “Finally, he got to the point.”)

It worked, but there were several unanticipated caveats.

1) It takes one full hour to reach peak effectiveness in our dog. I know because I timed it on several occasions.

2) Ergo, even for a weather geek like me (4 weather apps on my phone), I have to keep a close eye on the weather to avoid a panic stricken dog.

3) Trazadone makes her very logy. Josie, once the meds kick in, falls asleep (good) but the meds stay in her system for hours after. Last time we gave Josie Trazadone, she slept from 9:30 pm until 8:00 am, which is fine, but she slept away after breakfast until about 1:00 pm that afternoon. Not a big deal, in the scheme of things, sure, but I like my dog acting her normal self, not looking like David after dentist as she lumbers around the house.

We had a nice thunderstorm this Friday morning. NOAA-predicted storms moved in around 8:30 am EDT and they were spot-on. Lots of (needed) rain here in Flint, an excellent light show, and plenty of thunder, followed by several hours of rain beating down on our two skylights and the roof like waves crashing onto a beach.

At my side, a terrified 2 year old dog. A dog who came to our home two months ago with plenty of psychic baggage of her own. Josie is a rescue pup. She is a Boxador- a boxer/Lab mix. A 35 lb lovebug who often forgets she does indeed weigh 35 lbs of damn solid canine muscle. When Josie decides to sit in your lap, her decision is rendered without much discussion on the human side.

Josie, we were told by the fine folks at the rescue center, had a perfectly fine home. She was living with a young man in his place. He was successful and comfortable. He was also at war with a terrible set of inner demons. One day, he brought Josie to the shelter and begged them to treat her well. He could no longer care for her properly. They took her in. The gentleman went home and took his own life.

Dogs have 30,000 years of domestication under their genetic belts. Our pups have learned to be carefully attuned to our emotional needs. Undoubtedly, she carries much of that young man’s psychic baggage with her. Josie has already learned our moods and ethos: that we never hit, that we praise, that we love our dogs unreservedly, that we like dog hugs. As kind partners in her life, it is up to us to ease her pain, as she would heal ours. When Josie is near-panic stricken, we want to help.

It’s not easy.

That’s why I meditate with my dog. Since the middle 1980s, I have had a mindfulness practice. Meditation is, no surprise, easy and difficult. You sit, you count your breaths, 1,2,3,4, and then you start over. When thoughts arise, you note them, and continue on with the count. Understand, you can’t stop those thoughts; they are a massive wave, crashing across a Great Lake (I live in Michigan), but you can learn to accept them.

Over time, both with each sitting and your life, it takes less and less time for the thoughts to move from downpour to drizzle. Like practicing free throws, at first, you miss. A lot. Yet one day you realize, you miss a lot less than before.

How much should you practice? A regular 5 minutes twice a day is way better than 20 minutes once a week. Use the timer on your phone. Sit up straight. Heck, just read this bit I wrote on meditation for Dads Roundtable- Be Here Now: where else can you be?

Back to Josie.

Once each day, I sit down on the couch next to Josie. It needs to be quiet, with few distractions- audio and visual. We need to be in contact with each other. Sometimes, I sit with an arm around her. Sometimes, we sit so that our bodies are in contact with each other.

A dog of Josie’s size averages around 24 breaths per minute at rest. Her heart rate averages around 80-90 beat per minute in contrast to my 54-60 BPM.

We sit, and we touch, and I start to breathe. Slowly, but not exaggerated. Just a casual 2-3 seconds on the way in and perhaps 3-4 seconds on the way out. That’s around 10-12 breaths per minute. After several minutes, I can feel Josie take a deep exhale, just as your toddler did when they fell asleep on your shoulder. She settles more deeply onto the couch beside me. Her breathing slows, and I can feel her heart beat slow down. I’ve not yet seen her fall asleep as we meditate, but these days, her eyes go to half-mast almost every time. Ten or twelve minutes later, we're done.

What’s the point, you ask? How do I know her meditation with me “does anything?” Truth is, I don’t. Just like every human’s experience of mindfulness is personal and unexplainable, I suspect Josie’s is, too. By nature, she is a bundle of energy and joy, yet as she sits on the couch with me when we are done, I can tell that her well-muscled body (she’s a ripped, fit, 4% bodyfat) has relaxed. My own experience says that when the body is relaxed, so is the mind. Between the death of her owner, and all of the psychological trauma that man wrestled with before the end, plus her 6 months at the shelter, Josie rarely relaxed when she first came to us.

Now? She cuddles with my wife and I at the slightest notice. She’s still a pocket rocket when chasing after squirrels, but the gnashing teeth and the pacing about are gone. And soon, we hope, the panic at thunder and lightning will be the next to go.

Yes, I meditate with my dog. The reward? There have been several times as our eyes met on that couch, for a less than fleeting moment, we connected across species in a way that defies all the years of science training in my academic background, yet was absolutely there for us both. In Buddhism, it is called “satori” - satori refers to a deep experience of kenshō, "seeing into one's true nature.”

Maybe it’s all made-up, imagined as a dream deep within my consciousness, to meld with another? Maybe it is. But does that really matter? We may well be living in a holographic universe where “realness” is a moot point. Or perhaps in this particular iteration of the universe’s infinite numbers of universes, this phenomenon between us is real.

Doesn’t matter. And I don’t care. What it real is that Josie seeks out my companionship and protection at every turn. Perhaps, as the bond strengthens between us, she will learn that, at my side, thunder and lightning are not to be feared. As I often say to her, “nothing bad will happen when you’re with me.”

Meditate with your dog. It will do you both a world of good.