The Stories We Build
As humans, we are meaning makers. We experience something and almost instantly we build a story around it, and we don’t even realise we’re doing it. And that’s not a bad thing, it’s just how we make sense of the world.
But when we’re sharing life with an animal, there is more than one perspective in the room.
I want to share with you a simple story about a scarf and how it helped me shift my perspective of what I thought was happening with my dog, Darcy.
A Scarf On The Sofa
I’d recently been to a neighbour’s house for dinner, enjoyed lots of lovely conversations and food and left on a high. When I got home I realised I’d forgotten to pick up my scarf. The next morning my neighbour kindly dropped it outside our house in a paper bag.
Whenever something novel comes into the house, I always allow Darcy to go and explore it. (Within reason!) So I popped the bag on the floor, knowing there would be so many amazing smells for her to check out, including our neighbour’s two dogs.
She put her head straight in. I heard lots of fast and deep sniffs and ‘huff huff’ noises as she took in all the information through her nose. Then she gently pulled the scarf out, carried it over to ‘her sofa’, and lay down with her head resting on it.
It was just a moment. No big deal.
But as I stood there watching her, fascinated, I started to think… “I wonder what she’s doing with it under her chin” “Is she reclaiming it?”
“Is she just enjoying the other dogs’ scent?”
All of those things felt like a truth.
And then suddenly the question “is she lonely here with just us?” popped into my head
Darcy is an only dog. All my life I’ve had multi-dog households. This is the first time I’ve had one dog, and if I’m honest, I love the simplicity of it.
So once that thought appeared, “is she lonely”, I felt it in my chest.
Nothing dramatic had happened. Just a scarf on a sofa.
But this is how quickly we can spiral when we stay inside our own interpretation.
Inviting Her Perspective
So instead of continuing the loop in my head, I decided to connect with Darcy.
This is where dogs are such great teachers. Emotions are not fixed states. They are energy, always moving, always shifting. Several can exist at the same time, just as they can for us.
As humans, we tend to label emotions as good or bad. We try to hold onto and chase the comfortable ones and get rid of the uncomfortable ones. (When really we’re just pushing them back down)
Dogs don’t do that. They feel and experience the purity of all emotions. No denial or judgement. Just presence
When I connected with Darcy, what she showed me first was curiosity. She was taking in new information. Enjoying the scent of something different while still feeling completely safe at home. There was no dramatic longing. No sense of lack. Just experience.
And then she showed me something else. The moment I thought “is she lonely”, that feeling was actually mine.
That day my family were moving through something difficult. There was a lot of energy shifting and I was very aware of physical separation and distance.
Animals are incredibly attuned! They sense everything and they can mirror our emotional ‘weather’ back to us.
In that moment, she reflected something back into my awareness.
Emotional Rhythm
So I gently opened the conversation further. I asked her what loneliness meant to her and whether she ever felt it.
She showed me that when we leave the house, when she’s no longer being adored and engaged with, she can feel a sense of aloneness.
But what was interesting, it wasn’t heavy and it definitely wasn’t bad, wrong or something that needed fixing.
It was transient. She shared she was completely at ease with feeling that emotion and letting it pass.
That was such a beautiful reminder for me.
Because when we experience feelings like boredom or restlessness or loneliness, we’re so quick to move into doing. We think we need to change something. Add something. Solve something.
We’ve been raised, especially in the Western world, to believe that our value comes from achievement, productivity, movement. From being busy.
But nature doesn’t work like that. Plants aren’t always flowering. Trees aren’t always in full bloom. There are seasons of growth and seasons of stillness. Periods where everything looks quiet on the surface, but underneath, something is shifting. Roots are strengthening. Energy is gathering.
There is a natural rhythm. And we are part of that rhythm.
When we feel boredom, restlessness, or loneliness, it isn’t necessarily a sign that something is wrong. It can simply be space, time to pause. A moment where something is quietly rearranging beneath the surface.
Darcy wasn’t attaching a problem to the feeling. She wasn’t asking me to fix it. She was simply experiencing it.
There was no such thing as a bad emotion in what she showed me. There was just energy, flowing through different states.
From Fixing To Listening
What that moment reminded me of is this: without conversation, we live inside our own interpretation.
We see our animals through our lens, our history, our emotional weather. And sometimes that’s accurate. But sometimes it’s simply a story we’ve built.
When we invite them into the conversation, the dynamic changes. We stop second guessing and start understanding. And sometimes, what they share doesn’t just teach us about them, it teaches us about ourselves too.
That morning, I didn’t need to solve anything. I just needed to slow down listen.
