The Joy of Caring

While friends welcome grandkids, we welcome grandpets. The spirited beagle and her three-legged feline sidekick have moved south, so this post is dedicated to Tula who turns three today.

A novice when it came to caring for giant breeds, I needed help coaching Tula’s Great Pyrenees instinct to scare off intruders like the pizza guy and UPS.

“If we consider a dog’s reactivity on a scale of zero to ten, the sooner we offer distraction from stressors, the more effective the intervention will be,” said Starla, the dog trainer, on day one. In other words, if we redirect Tula when she’s at level two arousal, we’re going to be a lot more successful than waiting ‘til she’s at seven, when gentle snowflake has become howling blizzard.

Sent home with the assignment to practice sit and heel and redirect attention at the first sign of reactivity, we set to work. Empowered with the tools of awareness and consistency, I was eager to take Tula on neighborhood strolls that were more intentional, less intense.

To this day, a year later, walks with Tula remind me of how I respond to my own rising stress: to her puffs I compare my held breath, to her stiff posture my clenched jaw, to her upright tail my hunched shoulders, to her low growls my deep sighs. So focused on what’s going on around me, I sometimes miss what’s happening inside me. It can take a cold sore on my face to remind me to shift focus. Like Tula, I benefit from noticing the initial signals so that I can redirect my energy before the stress boils over in unnecessary, ineffective, and even self-destructive ways.

In the midst of that first training session, I’d been incorporating mindfulness into my work.

“Mindfulness training involves the practice of bringing one’s attention to the present moment, to what we are doing and what we are feeling, without judgement…via simple exercises of breathing, body scanning, gratitude, and kindness towards oneself and others. The emerging data are promising, showing that children who participate in mindfulness programs show less anxiety, greater concentration and memory skills, and handle difficult emotions better.”—Johanna Calderon, PhD, Harvard Medical School, “Executive function in children: Why it matters and how to help,” (December 16, 2020). 

As academic coach, noting the signs of a student’s stress and offering useful coping strategies are key; helping students to recognize the signs and use the strategies on their own, like the dog trainer did for me, can be life-changing. This means slowing the learning process down: checking in to see what’s up, naming the place the student may be getting stuck, stepping outside (literally and figuratively) for a breath of fresh air, offering company and encouragement, and doing my best to bring lightness and fun while also keeping it real, each step of the way (for a great coping strategy, see Dr. Kristin Neff’s Self-Compassion Break).

Recently, while getting to know a new student, I recognized once again the importance of learning how stress shows itself in others, so that we can offer support in a way that is timely. I don’t mean to suggest that mindfulness is easy. If my walks with Tula teach me anything, it’s that this is not a short-term fix, but a lifetime practice…one that ebbs and flows, and when committed to, can change everything.

There’s no question that Tula has good reason to react the way she does, to internal and external cues. We all do. The question is whether our reactions diminish or improve our quality of life. It helps to have others in our lives who gently and consistently remind us to take care of ourselves, so that we stay on the path and even enjoy the view.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TULA!