Animal Guides
A lesson in shaking it off.
Yesterday morning as he walked out the basement door to go to work, the dogs got into an all-out brawl. Or, to me, that’s what it sounded like.
I wheeled around from my spot at the table where I sit every morning sipping my coffee (this week, especially testy and hormonal), to see his thick pit bull, Cleo, snarling over my tender chihuahua/shepherd mix, Luna, who was making awful, dying noises.
“Get off her!” I roared. As my knees hit the ground, I tried to pry them apart. Panicky sounds flew out of my mouth. I screamed his name, over and over. I think I may have screamed the word help, repeatedly. My fingernails gouged at Cleo’s meaty neck as she lunged and Luna screamed.
It was only a second before I realized that Luna had Cleo’s thin blue collar wrapped around her lower jaw, twice. She couldn’t get free and was being drug around the hardwood floor by Cleo, who was suffocating, terrified, and therefore, in kill mode. It was chaos; play gone terribly wrong.
A few seconds later, he came running in the front door. A low, authoritative “Hey!” came out of his mouth. Time whirred. The room became a blur. I’m not sure if it was him or me, but someone unclasped the collar. Luna ran to the corner of the room with her tail tucked and I stood and paced in front of the sink, starting to hyperventilate. Big heaves of tears mixed with rapid breath.
Panicky, I rushed to the bathroom and shut the door as quickly as I could. I closed the toilet lid and sat down with my head in my hands. Sobbing, wishing simply to disappear. I heard the kennel door clang shut, and then the bathroom door open. He squatted down and put his hands on my knees. “Breathe,” he said searching for my eyes.
I couldn’t make eye contact. Couldn’t bear to see him see me lose my shit.
“It’s fine,” I croaked, my throat hoarse. I didn’t realize how much, how forcefully, I had screamed earlier. “I’m fine.”
That night he said, “I’ll call Meg tomorrow.”
“Why?”, I asked, knowing exactly why he was referencing Cleo’s foster mom.
“I’m going to give her back.”
“To put it bluntly, I think she’s too much dog for you.”
This morning I have very minor scrapes on my right wrist and a tiny, little puncture on my palm which I tenderly dressed with a bandaid and much internal fanfare. We discovered Luna took a canine tooth deep to the forehead (of which she is oblivious) and the dogs are friends again.
This morning we anxiously monitor their morning play. As she tenderly mouths Luna’s scruff, Cleo glances at me with expectant eyes, only wanting my love and affirmation, just as she has every day since she came to us five months ago. I stand with my arms stiff; unable, unwilling to soften. Luna shows no signs that anything at all is out of the ordinary. In fact, she’s sort of egging Cleo on.
Yesterday, after the play-gone-terribly-wrong, I went to breathwork; a private session with my favorite teacher.
Before we began, noticing I was clearly shook, she asked me to close my eyes and call in my spirit guides - any helping presence that I could lean on. I started to anxiously name people in my mind: papa, great grandma, maybe? But today, it felt forced.
And then the session started.
For an hour she led me through three rounds of rapid breathing. As my breathing grew faster, my body became electric, earthy and cosmic. I inhaled and exhaled on a swift two-count, tears slowly sliding down my temples. As I lay on the yoga mat, hyperventilating on purpose, the scent of palo santo hung in the air and a heavenly woman’s voice crooned from the speaker in the corner of the room. With every sharp inhale I went deep within my mind; every exhale feeling more expectant, more searching.
At the end of the last round, I took a giant breath and held it inside while squeezing my root chakra. The almost orgasmic spiral of kundalini energy shot up from my tailbone, through my spine, and into my brain, and I lay there, waiting for the weightless, peaceful feeling I had felt before. I waited to be held by god, for my entire body to start floating. But as the music slowly wound down so did the sensations. I released the air from my lungs like a balloon set free.
Okay, I thought, today I don’t get to commune with the divine.
As she slowly brought me out of the session and into a sitting position, my teacher explained what she saw as she sat with me for that hour, guiding me through the inhales and exhales, with her own eyes closed, channeling god.
“There was this beautiful goddess…with wings…almost like Pegasus.”
I smiled, and nodded. “That sounds nice,” I said weakly. A beautiful vision - for her.
I rubbed my eyes and put my hair back into a ponytail. I reached for my water bottle, and glanced around for a clock, wondering if I would make it to the yoga class I signed up for. Wondering if after that I would be able to go home and soften, after so many days of being hard. I started to fold up the blankets I had been laying on.
“Don’t worry about cleaning up, I got it,” she said.
“Oh, and one more thing,” she tossed out.
“There were so many animals with you.”