I brought Damien home a week ago.\u00a0 He mostly stays in his crate, but he does come out to eat, to drink, and to use his wee-wee pad.\u00a0 (I\u2019m very grateful that he always pees exactly in the middle.)\u00a0 He\u2019s not house-trained because he\u2019s scared to go outside.\u00a0 His crate, food dishes, bed, and wee-wee pad are near each other in my bedroom.\u00a0 He spends most of his time in his crate.\u00a0 I tried spending time in the room with him, sitting on the floor and reading, but then he started staying in his crate all day, so I realized I was overwhelming him.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m pretty sure he has PTSD, that\u2019s why he can be easily overwhelmed.\u00a0 He also startles when I make an unexpected move.<\/p>\n
At his foster mother\u2019s he slept on his bed in the living room.\u00a0 After a while, he discovered the kitchen and would go over when Karen was cooking.\u00a0 I found that when I was cooking, he would come out of the bedroom and as far as the step down which is a couple of feet from the door.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t any higher than his bed at home, so I know he can come down it.\u00a0 I\u2019ve tried enticing him twice, but he\u2019s not ready yet.\u00a0 Lately, he\u2019s been coming out to the edge of the step at various times.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been rewarding him with a treat whenever he does that.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t realize, until I brought him home, how lack of physical contact would be very hard for me. \u00a0He backs off if I try to touch him. \u00a0His lack of response is also hard. He responds to treats, but not to me. \u00a0The amount of pain I feel tells me this is a replay of being neglected by my mother and her lack of response to me.\u00a0 He, too, was neglected and possibly abused, so his actions can activate my own trauma.\u00a0 Yesterday I actually got very depressed.\u00a0 I began to think maybe it was a mistake to take on this very frightened dog.<\/p>\n
I realize I haven\u2019t felt that level of depression for a long time.\u00a0 It feels\u00a0like even the most simple acts are too difficult, and why bother anyway.\u00a0 Also, my body feels like it\u2019s full of some heavy grey substance that slows me down and darkens me.\u00a0 Luckily, I called a friend who was willing to listen to my misery and let me know she loves me.\u00a0 Another friend called and we got together for a cup of tea.\u00a0 These two events changed my day.\u00a0 I came out of the depression, like coming out of a dark place into daylight.<\/p>\n
I also realized that Damien is depressed.\u00a0 One of the hardest things has been looking at Damien\u2019s eyes and seeing the eyes of a soldier in Vietnam.\u00a0 The footage was part of the movie Dakota 38<\/a> in a section pointing out that depression is a common result of being in battle, watching people get killed.\u00a0 There\u2019s a kind of blankness and deadness in the eyes.<\/p>\n My friend Elizabeth had told me about a Hawaiian healing practice, Ho\u2019oponopono<\/a>.\u00a0 I had heard the story of the therapist who cured an entire ward of the criminally insane\u00a0by this process.\u00a0 It rests on the idea that we are not separate.\u00a0 If I see someone behaving badly, or suffering, or both, I try to identify the parts of myself that are like that.\u00a0 Then I speak to that part of myself saying \u201cI love you…\u00a0 I\u2019m sorry…\u00a0 Please forgive me…\u00a0 Thank you.\u201d\u00a0 It was very easy to identify the parts of myself that are terrified and depressed.\u00a0 In fact it turned out to be very emotionally rich for me, even though I wasn\u2019t sure what the words meant as I said them.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been doing this several times a day, and trusting that it is making a difference.<\/p>\n Reading the material over again, I see that the therapist is looking for the part in himself that created<\/em> the other one’s illness. \u00a0I don’t see how I created Damien’s illness except insofar as we all are part of the energy field of PTSD. \u00a0It still feels like what I’m doing is “real,” though I have yet to see that it’s making a difference for Damien. \u00a0It is making a difference for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I brought Damien home a week ago.\u00a0 He mostly stays in his crate, but he does come out to eat, to drink, and to use his wee-wee pad.\u00a0 (I\u2019m very grateful that he always pees exactly in the middle.)\u00a0 He\u2019s … Continue reading