Your Dog is Trying to Tell You Something

The whole concept of unconditional love is difficult for most people to grasp. It is difficult for some people to define love and harder yet to understand unconditional love. Unconditional love is not a difficult concept, really. It is pure acceptance and the willingness to accept someone for all of their fears, faults, and resultant ego. And love them anyway.

In short it is a choice you make. Just like that choice you made to dislike your neighbor, your co-worker, your boss. You were unwilling to accept someone elses's flaws and judged them. Your ego was in control. It told you that judging someone else was acceptable.

On several occasions, I have brought the concept of unconditional love up with other people. They squirm, make some half-hearted attempt to explain it, and none believe it is possible. The closest thing most will say is that unconditional love is perhaps only possible between a mother and a child. Or that of a dog. Now I haven't seen any mother actually practice unconditional love in the purest form of acceptance. But I understand those that think that the love of a mother for her child might be close.

But this dog thing, that is intriguing.

In my neck of the woods, people absolutely love their dogs. Dogs are simple creatures. You feed them and take care of them and in return they shower us with unconditional love. Dogs don't care whether you had a bad day or not, whether your checking account is overdrawn, or that you just got fired. They shower us with affection when we get home, wagging their tails and licking us. Genuinely happy that their best friend is home.

Indeed, I've heard more than one dog owner say that they would like to become the person their dog thinks they are.

You see dogs don't care about your bad day. They care about you. They practice unconditional love. Why? Why can an animal with an allegedly smaller I.Q. practice something that humans can't? How can a dog practice unconditional love yet human beings think they can't?

The dog has an incredibly huge advantage. Dogs don't possess fear and thus they have no ego.
Oh, don't get me wrong-dogs possess fear to the extent that they sometimes are outmatched and flee but that is simply survival extinct. What they don't do is sit around judging us, fearing us, arguing with us, or giving us the silent treatment in some juvenile way of reconciling differences.

They don't have egos. They are simply dogs. Devoid of ego, they have the capacity to love us even when we have been pretty crappy friends or when we ignore them. They remain loyal and available to us.

This capacity to love unconditionally is found in a creature that can't build cars, or sell real estate, and they don't covet anything other than a treat or a bone. They don't care whether your truck is a 1969 or 2009 model. In fact, they could probably care less that we have a vehicle at all. They simply love us despite our flawed beliefs and faults. Unconditional acceptance and trust. Love.

Devoid of ego, dogs practice unconditional love. Think about that. Your dog may be trying to tell you something.