As many of you will know, Thistle, our faithful hound has been a huge influence in our lives, contributing to his own series on this blog. You can read his previous lessons here, here and here.
After 14 years of stolen bed space, endless tumbleweeds of dog hair, and the best running partner I have ever known, we sadly had to say farewell to our beloved pack brother.
To say this has affected me strongly is to understate the emotions I feel by a cosmic magnitude.
He was never a pet. I was never an owner. He was my best friend. Guaranteed to make me laugh on a daily basis.
They say you are the average of the five people you spend most time with. Well, my average has just plummeted.
So, before I start ugly crying again, and the snot bubbles obscure my view of the screen, let me impart one final series of lessons from the tiny, hairy sage.
Buckle up everyone. This one is going to kick you right in the feels.
You leave an impact on this world, however small you think you are.
So many of us have been fooled into believing that we are too small, too insignificant to be of importance in this world.
We don’t feel interesting enough. We’re not pretty enough. Our role is not important enough.
Don’t fall for the propaganda.
Sure, there are outliers. Amazing individuals that standout. But the reality is that these people are the exception.
They might show us a new way of being, but it’s the collective of humanity, you and me and everyone else, that move the needle in the new direction.
Every one of us counts. Every one of us makes a difference. We are not detritus being swept up by the tide. WE ARE THE TIDE!
The quicker you understand this, the quicker you understand the profound impact you have on the world and those around you.
The amount of people that have welled up in tears at the mention of Thistle’s death is testament to the fact that even a small, scruffy dog can leave a lasting impression on those around him.
Never forget that YOU matter.
“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
Jane Goodall
Life is short and unpredictable
This is the pact you sign when you welcome a dog, or any other animal (with the exception of a tortoise perhaps) into your life – the knowledge that you will likely outlive them.
This perhaps is the most important lesson a dog can teach us. Nothing lasts forever.
Everything ends. And we very rarely know when this will be.
Dogs live life in the moment, embracing the NOW of every situation. They approach life with the same gusto as they do a random bit of sausage accidentally dropped under the table.
We can spend so much time worrying about an uncertain future that we forget to live life now.
Remember to stop and notice the good shit around you. There’s always some.
“In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years”
Abraham Lincoln
Unconditional love is the key to a happy existence.
98% of the time Thistle seemed like the perfect dog. But, oh my god, that other 2% he was an absolute dick.
From him chasing our sheep out of the pen I had just spent an hour trying to get them into, to the hours he spent ignoring my screams to stop chasing squirrels, only to finally return with shredded, bleeding ears and missing claws, resulting in expensive vet bills.
Such a twat!
The thing is, the blind rage you feel when your dog digs up your newly-planted potato patch just so he can bury his half-eaten rabbit carcass, is always short lived.
They never remain tales of annoyance. They instantly become the next ‘funny story about my dog’.
We don’t love them in spite of their endless twattery. We just love them.
This is unconditional love, and dogs are a super-highway to it.
So much of our interactions and relationships with others are based on what value we perceive of each other.
We give more kudos to the surgeon than the cleaning staff who make it possible for the operation to take place safely.
We value the opinion of an adult more than that of a child.
What dogs help us to do is see the value in someone beyond what they do. And when we love without condition, without the need for something in return, it’s a net win for everyone.
When my son, our second child, was born, I was scared that I wouldn’t have enough love for both of them, so strong was the love I felt for my daughter. But the truth is love is the well that never runs dry. The more we express, the more there is in reserve.
I think dogs make it easy to feel unconditional love. But the real magic is the realisation that they love us unconditionally.
Dogs give us the permission to accept that we are loveable regardless of what view we have of ourselves. And this is a profound gift.
We are enough, just as we are, to be loved totally and without condition.
“The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves”
Victor Hugo
Grief is the reminder of how lucky we are to feel so much love.
To truly love is to open our souls up to the universe. To lay bare the nerve endings of our essence and feel the cosmos in high definition.
This is why a broken heart feels so devastating. It’s also why the sound of your own child laughing is the most beautiful sound in existence.
Love turns life up to 11.
For this very reason losing a loved one feels so hard. The grief that floods us feels out of control, like it might sweep us away at any moment. It’s so visceral we feel it in every part of our being.
Having lost a lot of people I deeply love, I’ve come to realise that this pain, this agonising grief, is actually a privilege.
If I hadn’t have had so much love for these people, I wouldn’t be experiencing this much grief.
If the choice is between less love to feel less grief, or more of both, then I am choosing more every time.
It’s a painful price to pay, but one that I think is definitely worth paying.
Death reminds us, like a slap in the face, that every moment is precious; that every opportunity to express your love to those important to you should be grasped readily.
Because grief is just love. When we don’t know where to send that love once that person is no longer with us, grief acts like the safety valve.
Keeping anything bottled up inside, including love, is unhealthy. Grief allows the love to to continue onwards and goodness knows, the world needs love.
And so we should not stifle grief. We need to let it ebb and flow as it needs to.
It is an expression of love so raw and untamable that it demands to be released.
The pain you feel is as beautiful as it is excruciating.
So let it rage.
When the flood subsides, the love still remains.
“Grief is just love with no place to go.”
Jamie Anderson
Our differences just distract us from what we have in common
I’ve always felt that being around dogs is easier to navigate than being around humans.
With dogs there is an initial stage of posturing, grumbling and glaring, followed by the obligatory arse sniffing, then WHOOSH, they’re off chasing each other, dry humping, and pissing on everything.
I’ve never had this luck with humans. Many of the behaviours mentioned above seem to be frowned upon in public.
People (the human kind) seem so focused on what the differences are between each other. The gender. The age. The colour. The religion. The nationality. So much so that we miss all the things that we have in common.
Thistle showed me that we had so much in common. The basic needs that every creature craves; to belong, to love, to play, to have physical contact, to soak up the sun.
As the years went by my own family often commented that Thistle was becoming more human, whilst I was becoming more dog-like.
He taught me that we all share this earth, and therefore we are all part of one big pack.
Except for squirrels. Those guys are pricks.
There is a joy in understanding that each of us have dreams and aspirations, fears and personal battles we are fighting, and that in essence we are all the same.
Knowing this helps me be more compassionate to those around me, human and non-human.
Thistle didn’t care who you were. Always with curiosity and the undying hope that you might have sausages, he’d come over to say hello.
Everyone was a potential new friend.
The openness and hope with which a dog approaches life, and other people, is truly inspirational.
I think the world would be a better place if we were all a little more dog-like.
Maybe without the arse-sniffing.
When we embrace our commonalities our differences stop being something to fear and start being something to celebrate and harness for the super powers they are.
“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”
Audre Lorde
It’s taken me a couple of months to write this. And it’s been hard. I feel like I have lost a vital part of myself.
But the truth is this. That primal spirit of the Dog, that spirit of joy and adventure, the spirit of curiosity and friendship, the spirit of unconditional love, has been seared deeply into my heart and my soul.
Death can’t take that away,
This is the greatest gift and lesson that Thistle has given me.
Always in my heart, pack brother.
x