Crippling Fear

Our poor, little dog..

It had been over an hour of thunder and lightening yesterday afternoon and she was completely exhausted from all the shaking and fretting. When it storms, Daisy is inconsolable; she runs from room to room looking out windows.. won’t be held.. won’t be calmed. She’s gotta get through it ‘her way’ so we’ve learned it’s best just to give her space.

Of course I knew that the minute the rains let up, the July 4th fireworks would follow. If last New Year’s Eve was any indicator, our frightened pup was in for a very long night.

Right on cue, the explosions began and Daisy, while totally aware of the commotion, slept right through it all from first boom. My husband and I were dumbfounded..she was totally fine with the flashing and window rattling. He even took her outside before bed and she was completely unfazed by the neighborhood racket.

We could NOT believe it.

As I lay in bed listening to the crackling, zipping and blasting, I thought about the last year and the scary moments we all shared. Like puppies in a storm, we knew something major was going down but we didn’t always have a clear understanding of what it was or what we should do about it. Eventually, thank God, the skies began to clear and we too relaxed our “fight or flight” stance.

But there will be more storms in our lives..that’s just the way life is. So how do we handle it when the wind begins to blow again?

While I don’t want to infer that my dog thinks like a human, I have to believe that after the storm was done raging yesterday afternoon, she had simply had enough with the freak-out and decided to ignore the fireworks. Maybe she was just too tired to maintain that level of emotion and stress. Who knows..but either way, she switched off the fear machine and was a completely relaxed dog.

If I’ve learned anything at all from 2020, and my own dog last night, I’ve learned that crippling fear, as a response to our circumstances, is a choice.. and the great news is this: WE do NOT need to choose it.