Animals do a much better job than clinicians could ever hope to. And until therapists learn to leap up with joy at the arrival of their clients while lavishing unrestrained adoration on their very presence, they will always be a distant second to our dogs.
Our beloved dog, Eddy-Spider, turns 11 years old today, according to an approximation from vet records retrieved at his rescue adoption. He came to us just a few years after we lost our son and his predecessor, Rocky. We were resistant to adding another family member who could leave us before we left them. But we decided to go and 'look.' As we wandered through the dog area, we found ourselves just loving everyone, but none stood out or seemed to ask us for more. Then, just as I was about to give up, I heard a very loud barking from the back room behind a curtain that said "holding room." I went in and saw this black and white long-legged thing jumping up and down, scratching the cage, and barking loudly. I did a somewhat likely risky thing and stuck my hand through the cage. He began to lick it relentlessly. "Let's look at this one," I said to Chris. As we sat in the visitor room, I saw one of the volunteers coming down the hallway, being dragged by a leash with that same dog at the end. He took off the lead, opened the door, and the dog jumped directly to my lap from the doorway across the room. He immediately covered me with dog kisses, and I was his.
The rest, as they say, is history. He rarely leaves my side when we are in the same space. At the very least, he always knows where I am, if possible.
As I think through my life, Rocky and Eddy have taught me volumes about the value of unconditional love and how we all crave it. As I've become a Clinical Therapist, I've also learned there is science behind this. Plenty of research has come out on the positive emotional and physical effects of interactions with friendlier members of the animal kingdom, with dogs taking the lead. If dogs can lower the blood pressure of someone in a hospital bed, imagine what they can do for you at the end of every day. Could they be a key to becoming more secure in an anxious and sometimes fearful state?
Ounce for ounce, domesticated dogs have spent nearly their whole neuronal allowance on the emotional bonding centers of the brain. Neurologically speaking, they are little love machines. Actually, they are little unconditional love machines.
Our brains are built to take over the world and survive through the use of logic. We talk ourselves out of being vulnerable because, frankly, that can be dangerous. Our mammal counterparts don't need that much power, nor do they usually consider the possibility that they will be hurt by their caretakers. They focus on the basics of finding their food and caring for their young for a short time. So while we are out trying to control our lives and deal with our stressors, or when your partner, teenager, or two-year-old is giving you a hard time, they are at home just waiting to provide us with fur and affection. And the crazy thing is, that is just what we want.
In their book, A General Theory of Love, psychiatrists Lewis, Amini, and Lannon have figured out why this is so. Their work based on attachment and emotional connection studies stresses the mental and physical importance of having emotional bonds with other mammals. It is a plus if these receptive mammals are the humans in your life, but a dog will do. When raised in a more secure and consistent environment, we do better in other future relationships. However, most of us are not that fortunate.
Their theory is that mammals share an almost musical resonance between the emotional parts of their brand, which is why we can easily sense another's feelings. Picking up your loved one's bad mood or getting swept away by mob frenzies are examples of your emotional system communicating quickly and directly with other mammal brains, like tuning instantaneously into the same radio station. This mutual echoing between our brains keeps us in sync with each other. Babies especially count on Mom's attentiveness to stabilize them emotionally and physically. Such devoted attunement is crucial for the human infant to thrive and survive.
But this need isn't always answered. What many unhappy childhoods and marriages have in common is an inability to achieve emotional resonance when it counts. For instance, when we crave bonding and full attention, the other person's logical thinking brain just won't suffice. In fact, if someone responds to our emotional need for connection with a thinking response, such as advice or problem-solving, we feel unseen and invalidated. That's why empathy is essential to being a good listener and therapist. But most humans just want to tell us to get over it, grow up, or move on...
Your dog would never make such an egregious error. I know Eddy wouldn't.
The love of a pet has seen many people through a dark night of the soul. I know ours have. And when our dogs die, we all know how much of our hearts they take with them. As far as the loving part of our brain is concerned, a mammal is a mammal, and that's all that matters. The connection between a person and their dog is one of the last bastions of unconditional love still available in the human realm here on earth. It's the best part of attachment healing, over and over again.
Maybe that's why, as an old friend once told me, we don't find our dogs... They find us.
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