Heel Thyself

This is my new personal declaration.

Occasionally, I get messages from my higher self, the universe, dedicated angels, a parallel dimension scientific Pegasus or whatever power is in charge of delivering these kind of foreshadowing insights.

Perhaps it is simply an instinctual hunch.

Floyd (our golden retriever) and I were on the first stretch of our five-mile run. It is without fail a bit of a nightmare. He gets mental out-of-his-mind excited and runs too fast, stops short at every new smell and has trouble listening.

It takes a good half-mile for him to settle in.

This in turn, results in my arm nearly getting pulled out of its socket and me, acting like a psychotic freak, saying heel too loudly to resemble any semblance of confident control.

Cesar Millan would not be proud.

I’m pretty sure the neighbors who see me will not be letting their kids trick-or-treat at our house this year.

I would be wary too.

But, as I was losing my cool it occurred to me that the interactive juxtaposition of heal and heel was going to be relevant later in my run.

It always cracks me up that even in the middle of ridiculous behavior, there is room for contemplative futuristic messages and a kind of detached self-awareness that the insanity of the moment could never divulge.

Heel and heal.

If you say them enough times in a one-block period there is bound to be some homophonic overlap.

Four and a half miles in, we pass a house (that is unavoidable on this particular loop) with a Pitbull mix who is always outside and barks ferociously.

He sets off some kind of chemical reaction in Floyd.

I was terrified last time we went by.

This time, I stopped several feet before after the barking had started but one house before. I made Floyd sit, looked him in the eyes and very calmly told him we were going to jog by and he was going to heel.

We walked slowly at first and when he pulled a little, I confidently and gently restrained him. This happened twice. When he looked in the other dog’s direction I firmly said no and heel.

Then we began to jog.

And he did it!

Floyd did not look in the dog’s direction and stayed by my side, bypassing the menacing shoulders, lunging body and growling bark.

When we had quite diverted the situation, I stopped an praised him.

And I got it!

By heeling himself around the thing that triggers him most, he healed himself of the anxiety and anger and upset that comes from paying attention to that which did not serve him.

The message could not have been clearer. And in a way I could never have fully understand without the example. I just love that.

Floyd is my hero.

Dogs always are in a thousand ways. Animals and nature in general really. But Floyd’s ability to heel/heal himself was a particularly timely gift for me.

I have many Pit Bulls in my mind. They vie for my attention often, usually right before I am going to sleep at night or as I am driving along somewhere on a beautiful summer day.

I pay attention.

I turn directly toward the barking. I stare at the big gnarly shoulders of my thought and I think, if I try hard enough to understand what is going on here, why it is making me sad, angry, frustrated or confused, it will go away.

This is absurd.

At least the barking Floyd hears is a real immediate event.

Mine is a distant echo of something that has managed to get under my skin. It has all the threatening traits of a rabid dog. But it is not real unless I choose it to be.

If I choose to look away, it doesn’t even exist. If I jog on by, I am past it.

Heel and be healed.