by Steve Marshall

Created on: November 25, 2009

Life lessons can be gained from all manor of experiences, from people, things and events that happen to us, and all around us within our busy lives.

This article is a few of my own ideas about some of the life lessons that we can learn from our pets, and in my case from my own small dog.

I have a small dog that I have observed and learnt many such lessons from over the eight years that she has so far been with me.

She has taught me about exercising, about dieting and eating, about sleeping, about handling conflict, and about being herself, but most of all she has taught me about love.

Now we can't just be taught love, it must be caught.

I hope that I have caught all of the love that my small dog is so continually throwing to me my way, in her way.

How could a dog or a pet ever teach us anything at all, you might ask?

Well, it's about observing them and realising how what they are doing, can also apply to us.

For example, whenever my dog will change its resting position, it will not just get up straightaway.

No, it always prepares itself first. My dog will stretch itself first, and right through its entire body. Often this will be accompanied by shaking her body as well. I could almost describe this more accurately as a most violent shaking of its entire body. My dog's whole body is involved, form her feet to her head, and her back, and finally down to her tail.

She seems to enjoy the stretching, and the shaking then follows almost without her even seeming to think about it.

I have copied my dog in these movements, and both exercises are enormously beneficial.

We all know of course the benefits of stretching and exercising our bodies, but shaking, what could that ever do for us?

Well, for me I have found it loosens up nearly all of my muscles at the same time. It frees up my stiff joints, enlivens and invigorates me, and it helps me to shake off the tension and stress that is being held within my tight muscles and too firmly held almost rigidly fixed into position bodily position.

I also try to shake my whole body together at once when I copy my dog in this movement.

I have observed that my dog will sleep when sleepy, and she will eat when she is hungry.

Now this might sound simplistic to you all, but she is showing me here the very valuable lesson of not putting things off because of anything else that we might deem more important at the time, and she is showing me about living completely now, in the now.

Too many times, I have found that my life is patterned

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• Next Page >>