Thanks Be to Dog

      I'm wading through another big wave of depression that visits my life periodically. This is made no easier by the fact that the summer solstice is San Francisco's unofficial first day of winter; we may as well exist in the Southern Hemisphere. The cold windy fog is not what I find disagreeable, however, but that feeling of elemental otherness, how we're not in sync with the rest of the country or the rest of the world. Mild depression mirrors this contrarian stance. It deceives you into thinking that you are all alone on this spinning hunk of rock or that the rest of humanity has something good cooking and you're prohibited from entering the kitchen.

      Part of this is having to hustle so much in this city and satisfy the needs of the base - or root -chakra (the one that has to do for survival). This is understandable to a certain degree but even though I feel like I'm not hurting financially (even thriving in some respects), I've been so caught up in root chakra anxiety that I've been neglecting all the other chakras that make one a human being. Thankfully, the "bones" of my workday are strong as I get to spend time with lovely, four-pawed animals in the great outdoors. Office work, in retrospect, rarely challenged me. I would often feel like dozing off or just surrender complety to internet surfing at the expense of my work. Having someone lord over me never helped. My formula for success in SF has been a near pathological desire to be well-liked + a stubbornly independent creative streak.

      And then of course there are the wonderful dogs. I'm not someone who is super-obsessed with dogs (like other good walkers in my field) but I do have a tremendous amount of respect for each of them and owe them, collectively, an incredible debt for shaping my adult life. My view of Canis lupus familiaris  has spread and evolved from one that is totally romantic (as seen through mythology, film and literature) to one that is intensely practical (nourishment, hydration, relief, exercise and play). With the help of the dogs, I went from being a stranger in a strange city, just two years ago, to someone who has become indispensable to my clients' and friends' lives in Fog City.
      In no particular order, the dogs have:

• given me autonomy
• given me joy
• given me income
• given me a sense of gravity
• helped shape my creative voice on the internet
• strengthened my connection with a shamanic practice
• strengthened my connection to the outdoors
• helped me learn the geography of the city
• connected me with more than half of the people I've met in the City of Saint Francis
• helped keep me physically fit
• helped with my depression through large doses of oxytocin and Vitamin D

      With all this said, the dogs can track a certain scent but don't have the wherewithal to resolve a situation. Think of the search for a missing party. The dogs may take the lead but it is still other human beings who must amass the clues and equipment and organize the rescue. For this reason, I'm consciously choosing to reach out more to more human beings from this point forward. Dogs have therapeutic value but they can't be my therapists. They can get me out of the house but can't make me say hello to my neighbor. They can be the subject of heroic poems but I've yet to see one perform an original piece at an open-mic.