dog walking

This is Mickey. He's my regular walking companion. I continually learn from Mickey although I recently had an exceptional experience which highlights for me how much I'm learning to live nonviolence in everday situations. I've been walking with Mickey for around 2 years. There is trust between us. I've never experienced him attacking another dog and I feel confident in our connection.

I was going to meet a friend to go for a walk and took Mickey with me. As we approached the beach I let him off the lead and he headed down to the water. He went towards 2 other dogs who were in the water. The person with them was throwing stones. M's tail was wagging. I watched them and noticed that one of the dogs had started to bark at M. Within seconds the dog was attacking M and I noticed it's mouth was around M's neck. I then noticed that the woman who was with the dogs was hitting the other dog with a lead and screaming at it to stop it. I then saw that she was pulling at the dog. In amongst my concern for M I was starting to assess the situation from a place of observation and noticing that I was calm enough to do this. I recalled from training on the Leadership Programme that when there is conflict it can be helpful to go to the person who has the greatest 'dynamic energy'. I was clear that it was the woman at this point. I ran over and straight away got down to the level of the dogs. I knew I was safe as the other dog had locked on to M's neck and I could see from it's eyes that it was completely in it's instinct and not capable of listening to a command.

I remembered hearing from my sister who is an inspector for an animal charity that when you shout at dogs when they are in attack mode, this fuels them to into further aggression because they think you are backing them up.

I looked the woman in the eyes and intuitively started to make a shhhhhhh sound and said some kind of version of 'you need to stay calm and stop pulling him, it will cause more damage' the woman did as I asked and let go of the grip on the dog. I then put my focus on the dog who by this point I knew it's name. I started to speak in a soft voice saying 'it's ok S you can let go, you're ok darling'. To my surprise and absolute delight S let go within seconds and I immediately took M away from the situation. At that point I started to notice the emotion arise in me and I realised that my system was starting to experience shock and that the immediate thing to do was to give myself some empathy and make sure M was ok. He was, as he walked away looking for sticks. I didn't have the capacity to ask the woman if she was okay and although I felt sad about that I was also okay about it.

I then took practical steps to gather information and debrief this situation until I came to a place of peace in myself. I could clearly see where my training in NVC, meditation and my intuition all came into play and I could celebrate that. I'm aware the situation could have resulted in more injury than it did (Mickey had a small puncture wound on his neck and only required antibiotics). If the woman continued to pull, his neck could have been ripped and the other dog could have sustained more injury as she upped the force. I can see that she was frightened and didn't know what to do. This is the default mode that many of us can go to when we feel out of control, frightened. We are not able to access logic or to connect to empathy and resort to force. It's how all wars begin.