Grace

Mary-Ann Sontag October 15, 2020

Pozy and Pete demonstrate how to apologize — and forgive.

Two important skills we both need right now.

Have a Graceful Day.

Harper, Pozy, and Resilience

Mary-Ann Sontag October 13, 2020

Nine is a Big Birthday for a Berner. I wish that wasn’t true but I also wish the pandemic would go away and that has not happened either.

Harper B for Big Birthday reports that nine feels just like every other wonderful, happy time in her life (which is every minute of every day).

She is healthy, sound, active, and in all ways her usual energetic and kind self.

She celebrated with her very own birthday walk — and even made her own birthday crown.

.Pozy spent the Big Birthday having a really BIG playdate…

That is a six-month-old Irish Wolfhound!

At first, the thought bubble over Pozy’s head read, “OH MY HECK. What the fork are you?!”

Pozy could escape by going behind the hot tub.

We were careful.

Daisy came along to play first and make sure the 97-pound puppy would be appropriate with a smaller dog. But Jamison was completely awesome and nice — what a great temperament he has — and soon the two puppies were fast friends.

And I do mean fast…

At four-months-old, it is important that Pozy have these kinds of novel experiences. It is through the successful navigation of Novel that a puppy develops confidence.

It is the job of humans to ensure that the novel experience has a positive impact — not a negative one.

And only the puppy can tell us if the experience is positive or negative — it doesn’t matter if we think the puppy should or should not be able to handle something. Concern — like beauty — is in the eye of the beholder.

Sometimes we cannot control things and the puppy has a bad experience. This was the case yesterday.

The first Bad Thing involved Pete the Cat. He took offense at something Daisy said and suddenly those two were acting like political candidates in a debate.

Pozy went over to see what was happening and Pete, apparently recognizing he was outsized by Daisy, went after Pozy. Unlike Chris Wallace, Pozy took off running and crying with Pete the Bully in hot pursuit.

I turned off his mic in a big fat hurry and Pete spent the day shamed and outside.

Pozy, however, was shaking and upset. She doesn’t understand Bullies and Betrayal — Pete is usually her friend!

Cuddles and treats and etc. and soon she was fine again.

Until she wasn’t.

Because it wasn’t enough to be assaulted by a cat, two hours later Pozy was attacked by HORNETS when we went outside to see what Dear Husband was doing. He was, apparently, disturbing a hornets’ nest.

Not Murder Hornets as she is alive but crazed, cold hornets who took refuge in Pozy’s plush, warm coat and then ungratefully stung her repeatedly.

Pozy was yelping in pain, and frantic because she had no idea what was going on. The hornets I could get out of her coat were flying around the house, the puppy was crying and trying to get away from the ones still in her coat, and basically it was a terrible example of a novel experience for a puppy in every possible way.

We cannot control everything.

Benadryl and more cuddling — and then a long nap.

We bank good experiences to build confidence and resilience so that when the bad experiences happen, we can bounce.

Pozy is a bouncer. She is just fine.

But does it seem somehow unfair that on top of EVERYTHING, bullies and hornets are still operating in the world? Isn’t a pandemic enough?

Two resources for you today:

A great read on how to build your own resilience so you can bounce like Pozy.
A webinar about loss and life in the pandemic/what helps that I recently did for professionals/students.

Stay well and bouncy.

More on Pandemic Life

Mary-Ann Sontag September 23, 2020

It is important to acknowledge the ways in which Pandemic Life is tough — not to have an endless Pity Party but to be able to accurately assess and respond to our own needs. If I do not understand why and how this is a challenging time, I will overwork my 100 Little Soldiers, and that never goes well.

My Pandemic Life motto is Dial Back.

This means things are undone — without shame and guilt. After all, why give Little Soldiers a well-deserved break if you are just going to beat them up for what is undone?

I also like to focus on what I can still do.

It is not about finding bright sides or silver linings to a pandemic that has killed 200,00 Americans — there isn’t one.

But there are opportunities. Challenges, after all, always bring along an invitation for transformation.

If all goes according to plan, I will finish Claire’s CD this year at long last — and breed her. Staying home has allowed me to focus on her training, and it is going well. I am excited to show her.

That is my plan — we will see what the Universe has to say about all that. 2020, after all, seems to involve a particularly malevolent Trickster and so it is best to have only loose attachments to our plans.

Pandemic Life offers obstacles at a time when our abilities to find creative solutions to achieve plans are understandably low. Dialing back means that I am not also trying to do sixteen other things with my dogs at this time. Instead, awareness of limits means I can focus my energy and time on my priorities, understanding that 50 of my 100 Little Soldiers are on pandemic duty and simply not available to help with Normal Life and my typical overachieving hopes and wishes.