Can you get better with your dog? Good question! However, if I had understood before all the benefits of a pet, I would have probably made Pixie come into my life much earlier.

Among the advantages of a pet, it is recognised that these help us to develop empathy, responsibility, self-esteem, affection in addition to all the physical benefits (petting, walking) . Even if you don’t have an animal or intend to have one, you might be interested in discovering the 2 life lessons that Pixie taught me. We can really get better and rebuild ourselves thanks to an animal!

Accepting the present moment, that’s all

Dogs have a dream life. They were able to train humans to provide them with shelter and food. And so, they have only one thing to do: enjoy! I observe Pixie a lot. Totally in the present moment. She doesn’t wonder what will happen next. She doesn’t rehash on what happened yesterday. If she was sprayed by the jet in the garden, she understood the lesson, she never returned  to do it again. She’s not trying to change the reality around her. She takes things exactly as they are.

She is totally dependent and totally confident. We leave? We leave. She does not ask where we are going, does not try to negotiate: towards the lake or towards the forest? Either way, she’s going to take advantage and sniff everything. The walk will last 5 minutes or two hours? She does not know. So she benefits from the first second. Are we going back? Ah. Very good. What cushion will I sit on?

Second lesson: Acceptance

What good is it always to watch what I did not do or did not succeed? What good is it always to compare myself to those who are further, higher, more beautiful, richer, and freer than me? What good is it to over exert myself and sabotage myself? These are as hurtful blows as I do to myself. Punishing myself over and over again had no benefit.

So, with Pixie, I learned to rebalance the positive and the negative. Objectively, I would like to be more able to incline the balance, by focusing even more on the side of successes, achievements, lessons learned, I learned to no longer punish myself uselessly and even to reward myself by taking advantage of life to the full.

Animals are guides to exceptional personal development. They teach us to question some of our cultural “assets” that divert us from our natural well-being.

Lastly, by making changes gradually, one thing a day and taking to them, you can only get better!