My Rottie, Raspberry, loved peeping into neighbors’ windows, dragging me along for the ride.
What started as an embarrassing habit turned into a lesson in presence, teaching the power of staying grounded in the face of stress.
Today's love note is all about being as present with our pets as possible so we don’t lose our cool and their trust along with it.

Hello Dear Intuitive One,

If your pets are anything like my animal friends they are regularly giving you opportunities to practice staying present while pulling you a little out of your comfort zone.

Sometimes even literally pulling you into uncharted embarrassing situations!

Like what my 85-pound Rottie used to do, when she would pull me right onto the lawns of my neighbors, to get as close as possible to the windows and plop down on the grass staring into other people's homes to check out what they were up to. (Picture an embarrassed, horrified middle aged woman crouched on the grass, possibly crying, trying to intuitively sweet talk her giant, voyeur of a dog up and off the neighbor’s lawn).

Thankfully, 100% in part because of her efforts, we made a ton of new friends this way, because most everyone who saw Raspberry looking into their living room windows would come out and ask to pet her or bring her cookies, reinforcing her curiosity at each house we walked past.

It was Rottweiler Halloween, EVERY DAY of the week.

As funny as this is in hindsight, it took every available muscle and bone in my body to prevent me from dissociating and dying from embarrassment.

Dog friends, Raspberry (left) and Whiskey (right) pictured here in one of our favorite forest walking spots where the only windows Raspberry could peek into were hollowed out logs :)

Facing stress with our pets with presence

I actually LOVE how our animal friends seem to have a way of giving us beautiful opportunities to be better, regularly dishing out chances to be more present, compassionate, kinder humans. But being more present when facing an increased stress response to embarrassing public behavior isn’t always the first thing we think to do :)

Take Raspberry’s window peeping habit. My stressed out brain could have tried to:

Overpower her or control her (85lb dog vs. woman? Doable but not comfortable. Plus, overpowering another living being just because I don’t want to look weird feels pretty yucky to me.)

Train this behavior right on out of her (I’m all for dogs who know how to behave when absolutely necessary, because, no one needs their dog jumping on grandma, but in this situation, I would be just using training as a way to control my friend, and that’s not the kind of friendship I want to create!)

I could have dismissed her needs as just an annoying behavior (= dog who doesn’t feel connected to us or fully trust us - she would never have turned into the dog who’d shuffle into my office to ask for hugs every hour).

OR…

I could use my tools of presencing to stay in the moment where I could see the humor and joy in the experience, realizing she’s doing this because it serves a need for her, she is having fun, making friends and making the neighborhood a better place for my dog-loving neighbors (she was not intentionally trying to embarrass me).

So I chose to sit on the grass with Raspberry for a little while and remember that this girl was just being curious and engaging with her world in ways that she hadn’t been allowed to for the first 10 years of her life.

I used my presence to create a partnership with her, versus a power-over dynamic, so our bond was deeper and she knew she could trust me 100% with her feelings and needs.

We always have choices as to what we want our friendships with the animals in our lives to look like. It can be about control, dominance, and force, or it can look like genuine connection, understanding and co-creation.

"I love all the attention to caring Joanna includes in the process of meeting her. Right from my first interaction with her website, I felt Joanna's empathic nature shining through.

The animal communication session with my dog gave me profound insights to my dog and my emotional layers."

Shirley A.- Via Google Reviews