The Redhead Riter

Witty, Intelligent & Addictive

How To Communicate Like A Dog – The Unspoken Sometimes Sounds Loud

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Part of the healing process in my PTSD recovery was and has been relaxing, meditating and resting. That sounds much easier than it actually is and two of the top reasons recovery is hard are:

  1. I have a lot of things to do and I want to get them all done. It doesn’t get done if I’m sitting around doing nothing!
  2. When I was having continual flashbacks, my heart raced all the time. It was like having someone jump out of a closet in the middle of the night to scare you every minute. That anxiety rush of adrenaline kept me wide awake and on edge all the time. Of course, it made it nearly impossible to stop moving or sleep, so “relaxing, meditating and resting” was nearly impossible.

One of the constants during this whole painful experience has been a redhead that quietly comforts me without saying a word. Her name, of course, is Bella. You may think that Bella is just a dog, but she is much more than an animal. If humans would act more like Bella, this world would totally rock out of the solar system!


Bella

How To Communicate Like A Dog

Let me tell you a few things that Bella, our sweet dog, has done to help comfort me.

  1. Greets me excitedly every time I walk through the front door even if it has only been five minutes since I left
  2. Listens attentively to everything I say
  3. Affectionate
  4. Equally gives and takes
  5. Knows how and enjoys snuggling and cuddling
  6. Appreciates every meal I fix her
  7. Wipes my tears when I cry (Actually she licks them)
  8. Adds humor to my life
  9. Never too tired to give



Bella relaxing in the sunshine


Bella is ready for a nap


Maybe you are thinking, “Big deal! Bella is just a dog! People are not dogs!” Well, you are right, however, people should be more like Bella. She is not malicious, selfish or unkind.  Bella is also very aware of how I am feeling and knows how to co-exist with me. We have learned and accommodate each other.

There’s a great song by Billy Currington called I Want You To Love Me Like My Dog and in this post, it is most appropriate. I’m attaching the video of the song, but even if you don’t watch it, read the words below.

He never tells me that he’s sick of this house
He never says, “Why don’t you get off that couch?”
He don’t cost me nothin’ when he wants to go out
I want you to love me like my dog

He never says I need a new attitude
Him and my sister ain’t always in a feud
When I leave the seat up, he don’t think that’s rude
I want you to love me like my dog does baby

When I come home want you to just go crazy
He never looks at me like he might hate me
I want you to love me like my dog

He never acts like he don’t care for my friends
He never asks me “Where ‘n the hell have you been?”
He don’t play dead when I want to pet him
I want you to love my like my dog does, honey

He never says, “I wish you made more money”
He always thinks that pull my finger’s funny
I want you to love me like my dog

He don’t get made at me and throw a major fit
When I say his sister is a bitch
I want you to love me like my dog does, baby

When I come home, want you to just go crazy
He never looks at me like he might hate me
I want you to love me like my dog
I want you to love me like my dog does, baby

I guess that explains it quite well, don’t you think?

What do you think Bella?

Bella?

What are you doing Bella?

Awwww….I’ve worn my little Bella Boo out.

Bella sleeping on the couch


The Redhead Riter



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  3. Bella is adorable! …and there’s nothing like the unconditional love from a dog. You are very fortunate to have such a wonderful meditation guru!

    Of course, Bella is extremely fortunate also, to live with you! 😉

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  4. Dogs truly are marvelous beings … I am so pleased that Bella is there for you at all times! I have a Mini-Doxie and she is so very affectionate and loving. I love poodles and someday I will probably get one – after Peanut crosses the Rainbow Bridge (hopefully in forty years or so).

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  5. Love!

    Love this. Love the pics of Bella, too.

    I have a rescue dachshund Pickle, love her too and she helps me in so many ways. It’s true. Dogs are just a-m-a-z-i-n-g. And they just stay that way.

    Gotta love that.

    Thanks for the post and the cute brown eyes!

    Sarah
    A Mom On A Spiritual Journey

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  7. I have to comment on the song, sorry but that guy just doesn’t get it!!! You have to love her back like a dog!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    mom———lol

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  10. Ahh sweet Bella, she comforts you and gives unconditional love she is the perfect companion. I have puppy fever right now. I’ve been blogging about it, I have a pintrest board about it, and I’ve mentioned it o n twitter and facebook, giggle Please scratch Bella behind the ears for me xo P.S. your new digs rock!

    Reply

    • Thank you Katherine!!

      I am always so torn about having pets because…

      1. They will more than likely die before me and I don’t want that pain.
      2. They are a lot of work.
      3. I worry about them all the time when I’m not home.
      4. I’m not free to go off with Alyssa for an overnight trip at whim.

      Of course, nothing compares to the comfort that a pet can give either. Like I said…TORN! LOL

      I do love Bella immensely and am very grateful for her sweetness.

      Reply

  11. Animals, especially dogs, have always been in my life. Just now, I returned from feeding wild cats in New Jersey. Most days I go where these cats are running around, no owners, and leave some dry cat food in a covered shelter consisting of a large plastic tub that’s been turned on it’s side and filling a bowl with fresh water. There’s 5 of them. They come in close, sometimes even rubbing against my boots for comfort (I generally just put my work boots on in the morning without bothering to pull the jeans out over the top after; an old habit. If I am wearing my dress boots to go out in public I’ll pull the pant leg over them) meowin’ and wanting attention. They’d freak out and run if I reached down to pet one, so generally I pretend to ignore them. A cat scratch from a wild cat can be very dangerous, anyways.

    They wait for me, every day, glad to see me. They’re as wild as march hares any other time of the day.

    I’m not really a cat person. I have had one or two cats, that were close to me, I guess, that’s about it. Last one I had was named Pinky. I got him at the feed store, someone trying to get rid of cats because they’re barn was being overrun from the original mousehunters they put there breeding like crazy and making more and more generations of wild cats. When Pinky was a kitty, he was literally pink in color. He grew up though, got a little more dusty colored of a pink, but by damn if he is not still pink. He’s also one tough cat. He’s no housecat. Pinky’s life is outside and that’s where he wants to be. Pinky was fixed when he was about a year old, btw.

    I’m not much into allowing cats to overrun nature. But a good mouser is valuable asset to have. Pink goes after rattlesnakes, down in Texas, for me. He’s not lost an encounter yet. He’s getting a bit old now, and I expect, some day, the rattler is going to win.

    I stepped out of the motorhome late at night last spring on a warm April night, it was parked on a slab out in the country, on my folks place. Rattler struck me on the leather upper of my boots, hanging on. Looked to be maybe 5 foot or so, hard to tell as I was busy “shakin’ a leg”. Probably stepped on him, I don’t know. He’d crawled up there on the slab where it was still warm from the south Texas sun beating down on it the previous afternoon, seeking heat. I shook my leg with the ferocity of a dog that’s found the itch he needs scratched, out there in the half light by the open door of the motorhome. The snake let go, flying off into the darkness. In the next instant, I saw a flash of Pink moving at warp speed out from under the motorhome to where that rattler was fixing to land. I could hear the tussle of cat versus rattler in the darkness; peering out I could dimly see what appeared to be a pink ball rolling over and over with bands of his opponent trying to find a purchase around cat. The next morning Pink was meowin’ at me and there was no evidence of a snake ever having been around. Once again, Pinky had prevailed.

    The cats here in New Jersey have been fixed as well. I can’t say I really agree with having wild cats running loose, they are truly hell on game. Having a good cat like Pinky around though in a place where the rattesnakes are as thick as flies can be essential however. Where my kids spent their childhood there were rattlers galore, and their cats I give credit for keeping the place we lived, very remote and wooded, cleared enough of them for them to survive without ever having been bit once. I myself was bit as a kid, while gathering eggs in the barn; I got a little sick, but it didn’t kill me.

    Best dog I ever had was named Bandit. I acquired Bandit from my closest neighbor to us, and that neighbor was about 3 miles away, living in the same remote area we were at the time. Bandit was a cross between an Australian Shepherd and a Blue Heeler. A stock dog.

    Bandit was smart. Bandit is the kind of dog, if you are someone around animals all your life, you are lucky to have, once, in your life. That dog understood English, it seemed. I had a few head of cattle, and if I wanted one in the barn or wanted them found, Bandit was your dog (we owned 50 acres, un-fenced, right smack in the middle of 15 thousand acres of the roughest, hilliest, most beautiful, un-fenceable terrain in the Ozarks). I’d head off looking for them, sometimes on foot, sometimes on horse; Bandit scouting ahead. He’d find them, and he just knew what needed to be done. Turn them around and bring them back. I don’t know how many times I witnessed that dog go after a laggard and literally be underneath him, a bluish blur of barking, snapping and dust as the cow attempted to kick at him then give up and ran back to the herd, or out of the herd for him to chase to the barn. They were just no match for Bandit.

    I get the herd up to the place (which consisted of an old ghost town with a barn and a very good spring, that had been abandoned for 30 plus years after a local silica mine had closed), and if I then opened the barn door, paused, watching the herd, Bandit would go out away from me, looking at each cow, one at a time, then towards me. If he looked at the cow I wanted separated from the herd and put in the barn for whatever reason, I would just say, “yes, that one”. Just had to make sure the barn door was open for Bandit to know that one of those cows were going in there, wait for me to choose which one. Consider the job done after that, just shut the door behind the cow. There was no training Bandit to do this, he was born with this innate understanding that it was his job, being a shepherd.

    When Bandit wasn’t working with me, his main job was our kids. Bandit was a shepherd dog, and it was just in his genes to keep the herd safe. My youngest kid at the time was only 5, nicknamed “Neen”. Oldest was 10. I never had to worry about those kids wandering off into the woods and getting lost. Bandit would follow them wherever they went. If one went too far off by themselves from the cabin, Bandit would be barking and carrying on just like he would with cattle, to push that kid back to the yard.

    I have a photo of me and Bandit in twitter, standing in front of the cabin, Bandit looking at me and waiting loyally for me to decide what we were going to do that day. I sure miss that mutt. I cried when he died, as I buried him. Someone had purposefully hit him with a vehicle in Texas. Bandit was no dummy around cars, he knew not to get in front of them or where they could hit him, and if he was near a road, even a gravel one, he got out of the way. Somebody veered into him as he was on the side of the road, just to be onrey, and I found him in the ditch near where he was hit.
    I’ll never forget him.

    Had a horse I grew up with as a kid. Registered Quarter Horse, born on my birthday when I was 8 yrs old. He was a stud horse, the son of the world grand champion cutting horse in 1970. My horse’s name was Jesse James Dark Ace, officially on the paperwork. I just called him Jesse.

    He was really my dad’s horse, but he was never around to mess with him like I was, and, he was born on my birthday. My brother and I played with that colt from the day he was born, and his old gentle mother, named Dark Ace, permitted us to. He grew up with our thumbs as his pacifiers, ran along beside us when we ran, literally a friend. He was a stallion, but he never once had the traits of onreyness many stud’s exhibit, and I think that’s because he either thought he was one of us or he thought we were his colt buddies. I put a saddle on Jesse when he was 2 years old and sat on him; he never once bucked or fought breaking him to ride. I rode that horse everywhere, and worked as a cowboy on him at a neighbor’s ranch after my own folks left while I was in High School for Texas. That horse fathered many other colts through the years; he was a beautiful, heavily muscled sorrel, with four white stockings. Sorrel is what we call a redhead horse. Sorrel’s are my favorite colored horses, too. He was beautiful and extremely capable of working cattle, a real cowboy’s horse, bred into his genetic makeup. We had obtained him through my father’s foster father, who had a ranch in Nebraska, and raised horses, training and competing in Cutting Horse events at horse shows. Very successfully, I might add, producing a world champion in 1970; my own horse’s sire.

    After high school, I left the Ozarks for Texas, and began a life traveling in steel construction all over the U.S., including Alaska. I got back to see my horse at that neighbor’s ranch, a man who was more of a father to me than my own, to visit them and my horse, maybe every few months, calling them on the phone weekly to check up on them, and their daughter, who was in love with me, and I entertained the idea of one day marrying.

    And then one day I phoned in to them off a pay phone outside Minneapolis and they had sad news; my horse had a broken front leg. I drove home that weekend, taking off a few days from work to do it.
    I arrived and went to see my horse.

    It was bad; it was heartbreaking; it was painful to see. Jesse was glad to see me, but couldn’t come running up to me. He was stuck there, only able to stand, and if he tried to step…

    And then I asked John, the man who had been a father to me, if I could borrow his 7mm magnum that he used for elk hunting. John had it ready in the gun cabinet, and asked me if I would rather he did it.

    I told him no, he was my horse.

    I was 21 yrs old then, my horse was 13.

    I mark that day as the day I entered manhood.

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