My Principles
Counselling for Dog Owners
“‘Counselling for dog owners’?! I can see that idea might work in America, but probably not here” someone said to me at a networking event. Maybe the idea was too ‘out there’ for him, or perhaps he just didn’t understand it. It’s like any new approach. If people have nothing to compare it to it can be discarded as rubbish.
My approach does help people feel better about their relationship with their dog and it also helps them feel better about other things in their life.
Principles
My work is based on some principles:
- The reason we have a dog, or dogs, in our lives is personal to each and every one of us. This means that how we live with our dogs is also unique. There is no ‘right way’.
- Our dogs connect with us emotionally. They take their cue from what we are feeling and the intensity of that feeling in the things we do, say, or think.
- We (the humans that is), can block out how we are feeling. We get busy doing things. Our thoughts can become disconnected from our feelings.
- When we are struggling with something about our dog and looking to others for help to resolve it, there might be clues closer to home.
- If we spend the time to reflect on how WE are truly feeling we might bring something to our awareness that we had previously blocked out. When we can see the bigger picture of what might be going on it illuminates other areas in our lives.
- As we work in this way, on the areas that our dogs bring to our attention, we can start to experience a more fulfilling, richer relationship with our dogs and with ourselves. And we thought it was just the dog!
