The Teachings of Dog - No 9: Acceptance

After the sad loss of Hugo earlier this month, we've certainly noticed a feeling which I can only describe as "less dogness" in the house. Hugo had a big spirit, and although he was sleeping for 23½ hours out of every 24, he was still very much present. Even with the four other canine members of staff we were left with a space; a vacancy, if you will...

Of course, the laws of physics state that nature abhors a vacuum. We should not have been surprised, therefore, when a candidate obligingly appeared this weekend to audition for the Hugo-shaped space in our lives...

Snippets is a black and white poodle - at first glance resembling a small, rotund and anxious-to-please sheep, she has a perpetually wagging tail and a pair of dark, liquid eyes under a cascade of ringlets which serve to give her a distinctly rakish air. Lily and Poppy came with us to the kennels to collect her and hardly batted an eyelid at the sudden appearance of this woolly little being who was lifted into the back of their car without so much as a by-your-leave.

Within a few hours of her arrival, Snippets was becoming a part of the team. Despite being summarily removed from her old environment and placed somewhere with absolutely no familiar frames of reference, she seemed to take everything completely in her stride. Showing her round the house, she had no hesitation in trying out the sofas (and the beds!) for comfort and sat down by the Aga as if greeting an old friend.

It's interesting how like Hugo she is in some ways... the shape of her face, the expression of sweetness in her eyes, certain little quirks of character which are starting to emerge as she relaxes into her new home, and even her size all serve to remind us of our absent friend.

Snippets is a very good fit for that Hugo-shaped space in our home and our hearts, and it seems as though, like all of us, she is exactly where she is supposed to be.

Snippets's Teachings:

• When outside your comfort zone, have curiosity instead of fear; curiosity engenders growth, whereas fear paralyzes.
• Treat strangers as friends - they will always fulfil your expectations.
• Wherever you are, know that you are exactly where you are supposed to be.

Teachings of Dog - No 8: Thief of Knowledge

I've spent a lot of the last two weeks studying and researching so I can add exciting new content to my courses later in the spring. (Bruce Lipton's book The Biology of Belief is just incredible, and if you haven't read it I can highly recommend it!) I enjoy sitting at the kitchen table to read and study; there's a lovely view out over the garden for the times when I want to stop and contemplate something and, of course, the kettle is handy...

The canine members of staff also appreciate my kitchen study-time. They do have the difficult decision to make of whether to sleep on my knee, on the bench next to me, in the dog bed or on the rug in front of the Aga, but after a bit of shuffling they seem to cope with that. Theo makes particularly good relaxing noises from time to time and Daisy will do one of her famous squeaky yawns... Poppy snores and Lily's feet twitch as she dreams...

Yesterday afternoon I was working at the dental practice. The morning had been spent in study and I had left everything on the kitchen table to await my return. John was first into the kitchen when we arrived home and he discovered a strange little object in the middle of the kitchen floor... which turned out to be a tiny metal spring, amalgamated with a piece of chewed plastic - the mortal remains of the propelling pencil I had been using to make my notes.

I'm not sure what was so attractive about the pencil (although it was pink, which seems to be Theo's favourite colour) but fortunately the other items on the table had escaped relatively unscathed; I had to re-write the top page of notes (slightly torn) and my bookmark was discovered in the dog bed, but the textbook and the rail tickets which had arrived in that day's post were untouched...

I suspect a Theo/Lily joint venture here; they both love to indulge their wanton curiosity. Their motto seems to be, "If it smells of you, we want it; if it's crunchy, we will eat it and if you leave it where we can reach it then it's ours." Theo has in the past demonstrated a talent for stealing things from the kitchen table (usually unguarded food, particularly after a dinner party) and Lily loves to chew crunchy things (recent casualties include an adaptor from a favourite lamp and my mother's hearing aid, and previously a pair of John's glasses - no squeaky plastic toy is safe). Together, mother and son, they make a formidable team!

Theo and Lily's Teachings:

• The pencil might be used to write the book, but it contains no wisdom of itself. When searching for wisdom, pay attention to the message, not just the medium by which it appears... so if you want to satisfy curiosity, eating the pencil probably isn't the best way to go about it.

The garden in waiting...

Complete stillness in the garden today... soft, grey weather. The only sound is the waterfall of song from a hidden robin, cascading in sweet purity from the depths of the leafless hawthorn tree.

Across the lane, an astonishing carpet of snowdrops and aconites breathes light and life into the dark winter woodland.

The world waits for Spring...

Teachings of Dog - No 7: The Secret of Happiness

Daisy is a perennially happy little soul. Her beautiful, long tail, as soft as dandelion seeds, is carried high over her back and streams out in the wind as she dances up the garden path; just about anything can cause a wag of this gorgeous appendage. After a haircut, however, Daisy often experiences some consternation when the wagging tail tickles her back, causing her to turn in circles trying to ascertain the cause.

Daisy's tail chasing reminds me of a lovely story I heard... One day, Mother dog comes across one of her puppies chasing her tail and asks her what she is doing. The puppy tells her mother that she has just come back from Puppy Philosophy Class, where she learned that a dogs' happiness is stored in its tail, which is why dogs wag their tails when they are happy. "If I can catch my tail," says the puppy, "then I will have the secret to eternal happiness!". Mother dog smiles, "I learned that at Puppy Philosophy Class too," she says, "but what I have learned since then is that we don't find happiness by chasing it. Like your tail, once you get to where it was, you find it's moved on!" The puppy turns big eyes on her mother. "So how can we reach our happiness, then?" she asks. Mother dog smiles back at her daughter. "You don't have to try to reach it," she replies, "you already have it; happiness is always within you. When you know that, then as you move forward in the direction of your dreams, wherever you go, happiness will always follow behind you."