It is often said that animals live in the here and now. And that is true. They enjoy the moment and what is.
And yet there are also things from the past that weigh on them.
And I don’t just mean that they have fears because they have experienced something bad or don’t know a lot of things. Or that a certain behaviour helped them in the past and they still show it now.
It is rather that they are emotionally hurt because something has happened that they do not understand and that they think is the cause, that they have done something wrong.
E.g. there was this dog who blames herself because her humans split up. She thinks she was the cause because they often fought because of her. She felt a lot of conflicting feelings inside her because of this and didn’t know where to put them. It helped her to understand why they really broke up and also to see what good came out of it. To realise that her human is grateful to her that it happened that way.
Or then there was this dog who was just left alone when his humans moved out. He was convinced that they didn’t take him because he didn’t do his job of looking after the house well enough. And something like that should never happen to him again. Unfortunately, I couldn’t explain to him why his former humans were so heartless, but I was able to convey to him that his new humans didn’t expect him to be a guard dog. They wanted a completely different togetherness that would suit him much better and that everyone could be happy with.
So it does happen that our animals relate an event to themselves, that they think they have done something wrong. Because they do a lot for us, they want to help us, to fulfill their “task” as best as possible and it hits them when they can’t do that or think that they are “to blame” for something. Here it helps, as it often does, if we explain what is going on inside us, why something has happened and we help them to understand. This way they can let go and be happy again in the here and now.
Love & light for you and your pets
Tanja