Buddy by Default

Can you be someone’s buddy if you haven’t agreed, don’t know, and aren’t changing your behavior from what you’d normally do?

These are the kinds of questions I ponder while Zadie, my friend’s dog, makes her home-away-from-home with us while her family’s away for several weeks and one of my kids is pet sitting.

There are lots of changes that happen when Zadie’s in residence. There’s a gate at the bottom of the stairs to the second floor. The kitchen counter bar stools are displaced by food and water bowls on the floor. The sofa gets covered; although, it’s already stained, so not sure why I bother. A large container of food, treats, and bags reside on the counter.

And we all prepare to meet Zadie’s three main needs: food, love, and time outside, not necessarily in that order. You may think that she’d love walks, but her preference appears to be playing with a tennis ball in the back yard and intermittently eating her way through our lawn. She’s truly shameless about the hunks of turf she tears up and happily munches.

The love part is what changes my behavior the most. I find myself sitting on the kitchen floor petting Zadie. Leaning over from my chair at the dinner table to pet Zadie. And, of course, settling on the sofa….to pet Zadie.

Zadie’s behavior, as far as I can tell, doesn’t change. She seeks us out to request love and attention just as I imagine she does at her regular home. But by tweaking my rhythms to indulge her petting requests, she has, quite unconsciously, become my meditation buddy.

There’s just something so inviting, so supremely grounding about running my fingers through her sometimes silky sometimes slightly coarse fur, feeling the gentle rise and fall of her side snuggled next to mine as she breathes in and out, and listening to her deeply contented sighs.

Sometimes I join Zadie, who is already ensconced on the sofa, sometimes she notices that I am sitting down and jumps up to join me. But day-after-day, we meditate. My fingers in her fur. Her sweet presence reminding me to be present in the moment.