Your pup isn’t the center of the universe.
It is a TON of pressure on a dog to be the end all, be all, of a human’s life. The intense scrutiny, intense interaction is way too much for a sensitive dog like yours.
Dogs need to know that, “It’s not all about you.”
Your pup will be relieved that she doesn’t have to play that role in your life. Your pup is just now beginning to learn how to ‘just be’. She is figuring out that the pleasures in life are just being a dog.
I know this can be hard to hear sometimes, but dogs often reflect what is going on inside of us.
More often than not, when a dog is over-the-top in any area—like not letting an owner out of their sight—it is more of a reflection of what is going on in our head than it is in theirs.
Dogs are VERY intuitive and responsive to us. If we are overly concerned about anything (including too concerned for the dog itself) …the dog becomes overly concerned as well.
Your dog is a dog. Period.
We often inflict our own human emotions onto a dog…we’ll say,
“Oh Look, she’s mad at me.”
“Oh, poor baby is scared”
“Oh, she can’t live without me, she goes crazy if she’s out of my sight”.
When I hear things like that, what it usually means is — those are your emotions that your dog is merely reflecting back to you.
Dogs really don’t process their world like that. Dogs really do live in the moment they are in.
Yes, they are devoted companions….and when there is balance in the relationship; it’s a healthy, wonderful, reciprocated devotion.
However, we humans must acknowledge that the needs of a dog are not the same as the needs of a human. I’ll hear people say, “I just want a lap dog, someone to snuggle with.” My response, get a stuffed animal to squeeze and touch all the time.
Dogs don’t do their world that way.
How do dogs show affection, relax, and interact together?
The answer: they rarely are touching, they do not follow another dog around incessantly; they relax, they hang out around each other, they lay down, they rest, sometimes they’ll romp for a bit, then they ‘JUST BE’ .
