{"id":385,"date":"2010-12-16T05:26:30","date_gmt":"2010-12-16T05:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wellnessandspirituality.net\/?p=385"},"modified":"2011-01-07T12:29:59","modified_gmt":"2011-01-07T17:29:59","slug":"dog-days-of-winter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wellnessandspirituality.net\/?p=385","title":{"rendered":"Dog Days of Winter"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sunny Greetings!\u00a0 Welcome to Wellnessandspirituality.net where\u00a0we love to talk about—<\/strong> You guessed it—Wellness and Spirituality…..<\/strong><\/a><\/dt>\n
and<\/strong> how to reconnect\u00a0with Nature.\"\"<\/dt>\n<\/div>\n
Old Stomping Grounds<\/em><\/strong><\/dd>\n

Winter is\u00a0creeping in– seeping in through the cracks in the window sashes. My father has turned the\u00a0temperatures up in\u00a0the house to 77 degrees. \u00a0I’m working on the Christmas list.<\/p>\n

I loved winter when I was a child.\u00a0 We had a part Samoyed dog named Lucky. \u00a0We had named him Lucky by accident.\u00a0\u00a0When\u00a0we first got\u00a0Lucky, since he was a mighty dog of the North, we\u00a0called him Bucky from Jack London’s Call of the Wild.<\/em> But my mother said that every time she heard us call Bucky, it reminded her of her dear departed\u00a0Aunt\u00a0Bucky, who’d been\u00a0nick-named for her prominent teeth!\u00a0 So as not to confuse the little puppy,\u00a0Bucky, too much, we switched to calling him Lucky. LOL.<\/p>\n

He was small but white and fluffy with a curled up tail\u00a0and I’d take him for walks in the fields behind my house. (See the photo up above\u00a0of\u00a0my “old stompin’ grounds.”)\u00a0 God, did I love those walks.\u00a0 Maybe I’d sing.\u00a0 Maybe I’d walk silently. Often I’d run with Lucky by my side. In winter, if \u00a0the snow was too deep, I delighted in watching Lucky leaping through it while I plodded.\u00a0\u00a0Lucky loved winter too.<\/p>\n

There is something very primal about having a relationship with a dog, especially if you spend time together\u00a0in a primal setting, like a silent, snow cover forest. You feel a kinship, a connection that transcends species, taking you back to an ancient time when humans first domesticated wolves, perhaps for hunting and guarding purposes…in order to survive.<\/p>\n

My last post, Learn to be Young<\/em><\/strong>, was about longevity.\u00a0 You hear reports nowadays about “therapy dogs”that are taken into nursing homes or given to elderly folks to simply keep them company.\u00a0 In fact, therapy dogs\u00a0are trained to provide affection and comfort to people in hospitals, retirement homes, nursing homes, schools, to people with learning difficulties, and in\u00a0stressful situations, such as disasters. “Dogs add years to our life and life to our years,” says Jack Canfield in\u00a0Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover’s Soul. <\/em><\/p>\n

Indeed, if nothing else, a dog or cat can help\u00a0connect people with Nature, even when they are cooped up in a place such as a hospital or nursing home.\u00a0So in addition to the gift of affection that “man’s best friends” can bestow upon us, they can also re-root us to our planet and the kingdom of Nature—a kingdom from which far too many are estranged. In so doing, we breath a little easier; shed some of the existential angst and stresses brought on by\u00a0the confines of\u00a0life within four walls with no wind in our faces. “Your walls and buildings of rooms say what?” Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha asks….knowing that while Nature speaks in many voices, the four walls of a room are mute and stifling to the human spirit.<\/p>\n

Oh, how lucky I was to have Lucky!\u00a0Faithful companion and friend.\u00a0 When I walk tomorrow in the snow and wind, I’ll think of you again.<\/p>\n

Just reminiscing,<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Richie\/ Du’Tsu<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunny Greetings!\u00a0 Welcome to Wellnessandspirituality.net where\u00a0we love to talk about— You guessed it—Wellness and Spirituality….. and how to reconnect\u00a0with Nature. Old Stomping Grounds Winter is\u00a0creeping in– seeping in through the cracks in the window sashes. My father has turned the\u00a0temperatures up in\u00a0the house to 77 degrees. \u00a0I’m working on the Christmas list. I loved winter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,8,58,42,140,50],"class_list":["post-385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wellness-and-spirituality","tag-dogs","tag-grandmother-parisha","tag-jack-canfield","tag-parisha","tag-wellness-and-spirituality","tag-wellness-spirituality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellnessandspirituality.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellnessandspirituality.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellnessandspirituality.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellnessandspirituality.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellnessandspirituality.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=385"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/wellnessandspirituality.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":754,"href":"https:\/\/wellnessandspirituality.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions\/754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellnessandspirituality.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellnessandspirituality.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellnessandspirituality.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}