The Magic of Unconditional Love
The other day I did a healing for a lovely dog and his lovely person, they were both under stress and he had a skin rash as a physical result of the stress. In the healing I placed them both in a pink lotus flower as a safe space to breathe and heal and pause, it was very vivid and very powerful for them. Other flowers came in, too, to help, and the deep roots of the lotus through the water (emotions) to the grounding earth all played their part. It got me reflecting on our bond with our canine companions, which I very often do. The bond is of course very close and very special but we don’t always know how close or in what ways the energy is flowing between dog and human. As soon as I was told about the dog’s condition I felt it was stress and the first thing I went back to his person to ask was how much stress was she (the human) in; answer – “a lot.” So I included her in the healing with her dog. He was picking up on her stress and detoxing it in the only way possible for him when his liver was overburdened with it, the skin is the next on the detox organ list.
One of my favourite things to capture with my camera is the bond between human and animal. I am always in awe of the love that connects us to our animal and they to us. Sometimes the human does not want to be in the photographs but that is no problem because there are ways of them being in without showing a face or even much of their body, the magic is still there.
It is not just about the love though, the palpable and obvious love between our dogs and us, they also show us things that we need to pay attention to – emotions that we are feeling or behaviours that we are acting out. Sometimes they mirror us, they act out what we are doing but don’t realise it. Sometimes they just show us by example of the way we need to be. Unconditional love is an obvious one here that our dogs usually show us but there are many other things such as that we can struggle to let people close to us. They have so much to teach us. They show us how strong we can be and are always there with us doing their best for us. We owe it to them to do the best for them and value their contribution even if we cannot see the love in what they are doing.
Throughout the years that I had Rufus, my rescued people-aggressive dog, we always had a bond of love and a very strong connection, it was the main reason that I did not give up on him (I am not the sort of person to give up, especially on an animal, anyway, but the connection we had made me really try everything and anything that I thought he would respond to). Because we had the bond it was easier for me to listen to him so that I could help him in a way that worked for him more easily than it would have done otherwise, it helped me find the things and ways that did help him. The bond was really obvious between us but even if it is not so obvious in a dog/human relationship then there is still a bond and we can find it if we really try, if we are open and listening, and it is so worth it.
I have been, and am, so lucky with the bonds between my dogs and my horse and myself, sometimes it has been more difficult to accept what the bond brings us but always, always we are blessed by these bonds.