Chocolate, technically Audrey’s dog, but in reality we all have to take care of him, taught me a lesson today.
He was scratching at the door, as he usually does when he wants to go out. I take him out to do his business.
We came back into the house, and he scratches again. I let him out to play, but he came right back in.
Now he scratches at the back door. I let him out to the backyard, and again, he came right back in.
He scratches at the door again. I ignore him. He scratches at the kitchen cabinet where I am cooking dinner. Now I am getting really annoyed.
Chocolate looks at me, and I look at him. “What do you want?” I ask him outloud. What did I expect him to answer??
He keeps scratching. I continue to ignore him, ready to scream at him. “You stupid dog!”
He looks at me, I look at him…I know he is trying to tell me something.
Wait, could it be that he wants his dinner? It’s 45 minutes before his usual dinnertime, so I didn’t think that was what he was trying to say. But okay, I gave him his cup of dog food. He hungrily ate it up. Contented, he stopped his antics.
Lessons I learned from Chocolate:
1. With people who do not share the same communication style as me, it’s difficult to get the message across to each other. It takes patience. Do not get annoyed. Don’t blame each other. The correct message will get across if we lovingly persevere.
2. As D said in my previous post, we often don’t listen to people as we should, and we don’t put ourselves in the other person’s shoes. I assumed Chocolate was not asking for dinner because to me, it wasn’t his dinnertime. To him, it was. He was hungry no matter what I thought.
3. When it gets frustrating, remember the other person’s character and how he usually acts. Chocolate has lived with us all of his life (except for the the first 6 weeks). He never scratches the door or cabinet for no reason. If I interpret today’s scratching as his way of just trying to annoy me, I have disregarded our past harmonious relationship together and only focused on the present conflict. Once I respect his good intentions, then I was able to really hear what he was trying to say.
Gotta go, Chocolate is scratching at the front door…