Training and entertainment of dog in all glory, but for me, the most important thing I can offer my dog is – balance. I thought I would dedicate this post to describing my own view of what balance is, and why I believe it is so important. It is irrelevant whether an individual is human, dog, fisk, val, katt, elephant or something else. Balance is something we all strive for, because imbalance is so incredibly stressful to live with.
I have maybe a slightly different perspective on this matter of balance and imbalance, because I live with bipolar disorder. I have lived with a huge imbalance my whole life, ever since I was a child, and it is not until relatively recently (a couple, three years ago) as I realized what the opposite of that is – balance.
There are certainly as many interpretations of the concept of balance as it allows individuals to interpret it, but I can only give you my own idea of what it means.
For me, shopping balance, among other things, about the ability to self-adjust one's mood. It is about the ability to actively choose how to interpret, reacts and acts on different things. It is about the ability to make aware, sensible choices that benefit one, instead of acting based on emotional states where one is unable to think rationally. For me with my bipolar disorder this has a tendency to get out of control and reach levels that normal people can't even imagine.
It also deals about the ability to control one's emotional life and how one is controlled by both one's own thoughts and feelings as well as external circumstances. In a way, you can call it self-control. The greater the victim role one assumes, the less ability you have to control this in yourself.
Balance is not constant. Balance is something you have to strive for all the time – some more than others. Living in imbalance, However, likes to take over and become a constant. I am at the time of writing 44 years old, and it's only been a few years since I started experiencing balance as a state for longer than a few minutes at a time every three or four months or so.
For those who have not lived any longer periods in constant imbalance, I can say that it is extremely stressful. It easily produces very spontaneous reactions that can be compared to instincts, which are extremely difficult to control. When you have no control over your reactions and actions, no matter how big or small it is, it easily produces consequences you hadn't imagined. You stop trusting yourself and others because you are unable to have that control, that balance.
The consequence of that is that self-image and self-confidence deteriorate, and then it becomes a downward spiral of, in general, just plain and simple, badly.
As a human being there are things you can do to restore balance as much as possible. If the reasons are due to circumstances, you can work on changing these. If the cause is psychological, different forms of therapy can be used. Some people learn to live with a certain degree of imbalance.
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For a dog, However, who do not think, react and act in the same way as us humans, isn't there super much it can do by itself. A dog is at its best when it has balance, and it will always strive for it. But for a dog whose human(s) do not have balance, it becomes much more difficult. Dogs are simple that way – they directly reflect their immediate surroundings. Is man out of balance, is the dog out of balance. It can manifest itself in slightly different ways, but that's kind of the point.
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So if we as people find it stressful and difficult to live in imbalance, how is it not for a dog? Especially when the dog can't do anything about it? I am far from an expert, but I've seen enough dogs in groups to know that a dog that gets too high in energy will be reprimanded by at least one other dog, until the energy has dropped to an accepted level.
For me like have a very intimate relationship and knowledge of how imbalance works for me, and how incredibly nice I think it is when I actually have balance, is this an insanely important question when it comes to dogs. Why do we want to expose our dogs to an emotional state we ourselves can spend quite a lot of money on, time and energy on, to get rid of? Why do we think our dogs deserve to live under such stress and pressure that imbalance actually is, regardless of the reason?
Balance is not a constant state. However, one can live in more or less balance. I personally have good days, and i have bad days. The closer I am to the middle of the scale between good and bad, the better. Therefore, it is one of my biggest goals in life; to achieve and maintain such a great measure of balance, as possible.
But my fasting belief is that balance as much as possible, is the most beautiful gift we can give to our dogs.