My Dogs Are My Gurus

"They changed your life" my old friend said the other day. With "they" he meant the dogs. Kenzo, Viva, and Tilde.

He called me up to hear how I was doing. I hadn't spoken with him for a decade. I can imagine his surprise to find me on the other end of the phone, not doing business or developing a new tech gadget or application, storming through board-rooms with new ideas. Instead, he found me in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, self-employed, which allowed me to work from home, and I talked about the dogs a lot.

There is something about the mentioning of "life changing" that makes me frown when I hear it. It sounds so theatrical. It's misused by people that call themselves gurus. Accordingly, I tend to avoid anything they want me to believe, I don't read the books, I avoid the seminars, I have no guru, no God. Life takes it course and I don't want anybody to interpret or filter things for me. It's for me to experience.

But I had to give my friend right. Dogs do have an unmistakeable effect on our lifes. It doesn't happen as an epiphany, in one big-bang, an eureka moment. We all have buttons to push. Over time, dogs tend to find where these buttons are and gently start pushing them. In my case it was the connection with nature, to take care of the ones that are closest and dearest to me, and to express the thoughts and feelings that came along with it. I somehow had lost these things along the way.

They went buried but were still there, hidden even for myself. A part of who I am, yet forgotten, until Kenzo, Viva, and Tilde re-connected me. Did they changed my life? In a way they did. My life maybe didn't reflect me anymore, and they brought my life back in sync with what I needed it to be, without me realizing they would take me down this road. Some call that life changing. Together with the smiles, the joy, and the love they give me each day, I guess I am pretty lucky to have them as my gurus.