Abby Quillen

Freelance Content Marketing Writer and Editor

Empathy

4 Lessons Dogs Teach Us About Life

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We adopted a mixed-breed puppy five months ago. She’s jet black with white patches, and we named her Flower. Two little boys, a puppy, and two elderly cats make for a special brand of pandemonium — and a lot of joy. I grew up with dogs, but I’ve spent 15 years with feline companions. So Flower astounds me. “She listens! She seems to like us! We can actually train her not to do something!” Our cats, quintessential introverts, have no interest in such things.

Pets are a huge responsibility and expense. Americans spend 60 billion dollars a year on them. Lately, I’ve been reflecting on what we get from these intimate inter-species relationships. Here are a few of the lessons Flower has been teaching (or reminding us of).

You don’t need words to communicate

Dogs are experts at reading non-verbal cues and tone of voice. They watch us nearly as closely as our own infants and can supposedly read us better than chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest primate relatives. Scientists say humans and dogs evolved as companions over tens of thousands of years, and some theorize that wild dogs instigated the inter-species relationship by learning to understand our gestures.

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For a long time, people assumed dogs were not as highly sensitive as they seem but were learning to recognize a cue, such as an angry voice. However, a more recent study suggests dogs categorize humans’ varied emotional responses, which helps them attune to our moods. And the ability seems to be intrinsic (not learned). In any case, spending time with a dog is an amazing lesson in how much we communicate without opening our mouths and how much we can learn about people by paying attention.

Empathy is powerful

One afternoon on the way to the dog park, Flower was a bundle of energy. It had just rained and the winding trail was slippery. As we rounded a curve, Flower saw the gate to the park, lunged for it, and pulled me down. Flower forgot all about the dog park. She turned around, ran to me, curled into my lap, and started licking my face.

I spend a lot of time with two little boys who are still learning the ins and outs of empathy — “It doesn’t matter if you’re sad, right Mommy?” But empathy seems to come naturally to Flower. And she’s not unusual in the canine world. A dog is more likely to approach someone who’s crying than someone who is humming or talking, according to one study. Relationships — human or canine — can be challenging. A little empathy goes a long way.

Puppy Power

Movement is fun

Dogs are excellent movement coaches. Flower never puts exercise on the end of her to-do list after a litany of chores. Moving is one of her favorite things, second only to food, and she never takes for granted the simple joy of walking or running or playing ball. Her zeal for moving helps us all add more of it to our days. Moreover, she reminds us that it can be our favorite part of the day.

Categories Don’t Always Fit

Adopting a dog can supposedly ward off loneliness, not only because you have the dog as a companion, but because the dog invites more social interaction with other people. It’s true. Our walks these days are filled with happy conversations with strangers. People love dogs.

Many passersby are curious about what breed Flower is. She is about as mixed-breed as dogs get. We usually list off a few of the breeds we’re relatively certain she has — English Pointer, Australian Shepherd, etc. But that answer usually does not suffice. Quite a few people are convinced they know what category she’s actually in. From Jack Russell Terrier to Bulldog to Border Collie, we’ve heard lots of different ideas. We humans sure like our categories, don’t we? Flower’s a good reminder that dogs (and people) don’t always fit in one.

I loved having a dog companion when I was a kid, and it’s fun to see how much my boys already love Flower. (Unfortunately, our cats are not such huge fans.) Training a puppy is not easy, but it has a way of reminding us what’s important. Besides, watching Flower chase her tail never gets old.

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Learning to Listen

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“The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence, the second listening.” – Solomon Ibn Gabriol

Photo credit: NJ..

Recently I wrote a post about acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton’s search for natural silence, and something he said to a New York Times reporter caught my attention:

“When you become a better listener to nature, you become a better listener to your community, your children, the people you work with.”

We’ve become so good at blocking out the jarring sounds of our modern world – the sirens, jets, garbage trucks, lawn mowers, leaf blowers, honking horns, barking dogs, and blaring televisions – are we also ignoring each other?

Margaret Wheatley thinks so. She’s a writer, teacher and consultant, who travels the world advising organizations going through times of change and stress. She’s worked with the U.S. Army, Fortune 100 corporations, the Girl Scouts and numerous foundations, public schools, government agencies, colleges, churches, professional associations and monasteries. Several years ago she visited an organization I worked for, which seems to be in a constant state of tumult.

Wheatley says that our natural state is to be together, but we keep moving away from each other. And she thinks the reason for that is that we’re all trying to tell our own stories, but nobody is listening. In her book, Finding Our Way, she writes:

This is an increasingly noisy era — people shout at each other in print, at work, on TV. I believe the volume is directly related to our need to be listened to. In public places, in the media, we reward the loudest and most outrageous. People are literally clamoring for attention, and they’ll do whatever it takes to be noticed. Things will only get louder until we figure out how to sit down and listen.

Gordon Hempton says we can learn to listen by spending time in natural places and listening to silence. Wheatley says we should practice by approaching someone we don’t know, don’t like, or whose way of living is a mystery to us, and sit quietly and listen to what they have to say.

Could you keep yourself from arguing, or defending, or saying anything for awhile? Could you encourage the person to just keep telling you his or her version of things, that one side of the story? … I know now that neither I nor the world changes from my well-reasoned passionately presented arguments. Things change when I’ve created even just a slight movement toward wholeness, when I move closer to another through my patient, willing listening.

In 1971 activist John Francis saw two oil liners collide beneath the Golden Gate Bridge and decided to stop riding in and driving motorized vehicles. In the weeks afterward, he announced his decision to his friends and family and found himself in countless arguments. He soon got tired of fighting and decided to spend a day just being silent and listening. In his TED speech he explains:

So on this first day, I actually listened. And it was very sad to me, because I realized that for those many years, I had not been learning. I was 27. I thought I knew everything. I didn’t. And so I decided I better do this for another day, then another day … Well, that lasted 17 years.

While Francis was listening, he walked across the United States, got a PhD in environmental studies, and even taught university-level classes.

Lately I’ve noticed the healing power of listening in my own life. The other night my son resisted going to sleep. He lay tossing and turning, restless. We sang songs. We told stories.

“Are you scared of something?” I finally asked.

“Trash truck outside,” he said.

Our garbage had been picked up earlier, and we’d watched from the window as the truck’s mechanical arm lowered and snatched our garbage pails. “You’re scared of the trash truck,” I repeated.

“Yeah,” he said, and within minutes he was asleep. It made me reflect on all the times I was grieving or anxious or couldn’t sleep, and I told my husband about it, and he heard me, and that was enough.

Some believe just listening might even be enough to help heal some of the world’s most violent and entrenched stalemates. Participants of the Compassionate Listening Project travel to the Middle East to listen to Israeli and Palestinian people’s stories. Leah Green wrote about it for YES! Magazine in 2001:

After years of listening, it has become so clear to me: all are suffering, all are wounded, all want to live with security, justice and peace. All are worthy of our compassion.The question remains, how do we break the cycles of violence? Perhaps listening is one of the keys. I’m now holding the vision of a new, global listening movement.

What do you think? Have you experienced the healing power of listening? Do we need a global listening movement?