I met a dog that looked a lot like this on my walk this morning. There are no leash laws here in Amherst County and we are advised to carry a walking stick when we leave the grounds. I brandished my stick, but Cujo crossed the road anyway. "Just one minute," I told him, standing my ground. "You go home. GO HOME!" I was remembering something a friend of mine had done a few years back. She was my younger daughter's basketball coach in middle school and one afternoon my daughter and her teammates were pursued by a dog as we walked back to the car after a game. The dog was pretty small, but I was really afraid it would bite us. "You come here," my friend said to the dog and the dog came right up and sat down on the sidewalk in front of her. "Listen to me," she said. "That's enough of that. Now go home." The dog turned and left.
I find that I'm a lot less likely to spring into the panic mode than I used to be. I think it helps to conjure up these scenes involving the calmer people in my life--like my friend, Doris. It worked well in this case. The dog barked a few more times and as I kept walking, it crossed to my side of the road, but it didn't follow me.
1 comment:
Something about having your worst fear manifest in your life and surviving it.... And actually going on to thrive in your new incarnation, is surprisingly relaxing.
Like making a fool of yourself in public, falling on your face, experiencing failure, filing for bankruptcy, having your van confiscated at the border. My resilience surprises me. I was so sure I would die of heartbreak that I was tempted to actively participate in the process. Women have so completely bought into the idea of original sin and the "apple" fairy tale that we spend way too much of our lives struggling to ignore the self-destructive temptations of our collective consciousness.
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