For the past week I have been dog-sitting for my son’s newest addition, Sadie.
Rescued several weeks ago from a kennel, we know very little about Sadie’s background, but her many fears, especially of enclosed spaces, like houses, rooms, or cars, provides a challenge, since she often has to be pushed or lifted to get her from one place to another – that is unless we are going outside.
Once she has the sense of space and the thousand scents that fill the air, Sadie’s body begins to relax, her tail raises from between her legs and she moves with less hesitation. If we stay out long enough she sometimes regains her puppy behavior, snatching at sticks, throwing pine-cones in the air, and lunging like she’s ready for a game of catch-me-if-you can.
But when it’s time to go in, her powerful hind legs put on the breaks at the door, making the emphatic statement that inside is not a good place to be.
While Sadie’s young life may have been compromised at some point and her memories of “inside” raise fear in her canine heart, her preference for nesting in a bed of ivy, or lounging under the pine bushes, comes, for me, as a reinforcement of the Nature Principal – a wonderful book I finished reading just weeks before Sadie’s visit. The book’s message is still fresh in my mind, as is its sub-title, “Human restoration and the end of nature-deficit disorder.”
Says the book’s author, Richard Louv, “Primarily a statement of philosophy, the Nature Principle is supported by a growing body of theoretical, anecdotal, and empirical research that describes the restorative power of nature—its impact on our sense and intelligence; on our physical, psychological, and spiritual health; and on the bonds of family, friendship and the multi-species community. Illuminated by ideas and stories from good people I have met, this book asks: what would our lives be like if our days and nights were as immersed in nature as they ware in technology? How can each of us help create that life-enhancing world, not only in a hypothetical future, but right now, for our families and for ourselves?”
The questions Louv poses, no matter our religious traditions or spiritual leanings, are essential to our wholeness as a human community; a community that can still benefit from the lessons of our non-human companions on the journey that is life.
Sadie has also reminded me of one other thing -- I don't have to stand at the door and whine, waiting for someone to let me out. I just have to turn the knob.
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