Gimme Some Sugar! (The snuffle report)

ink doodle of Sugar, 2014

Sugar is my dog - a diamond with many facets of therapy all wrapped up in her furry ball-of-loveness. I adopted her in January this year, after the death of Darbyshmoo. She was all anyone could want in a dog: she's house trained, she's spayed, she's microchipped, she's heart worm negative, she fetches, she doesn't beg for food from my plate, she doesn't chew on anything I leave out that isn't hers. And she's soft and cuddly. What I didn't know at the time was this:

Somehow, somewhere, someone has trained her to give a special kind of therapy. She knows when someone is suffering.

When the Voices are screaming, when the Hands are groping, when the world is shit, she knows. She just knows, and I don't know how. Even the smallest, wee-hours whimpers of "leave me alone" I utter when the People are evil, abusive, and bad will elicit the BEST. RESPONSE. EVER.

Sugar's love radar picks up the smallest disturbance in my emotional state, and she SNUFFLES me.
Creeping over to me with gentle, slow movements, she lays her head on my chest and SNUFFLES into my neck. Then she'll lie on top of me (I am usually prostrate on the bed in my moments of crisis), and breathe into my face. She lets me embrace her. We snuggle like this. She reminds me what is real, and I am suddenly safe inside her particular, furry pocket of love until I fall asleep. It's an unexpected gift of unconditional support.

I've experimented with her responses. She won't do it if I am faking it in the slightest way. But she is consistently aware when I need her. She's ... tuned in.

When we are cut off, isolated and alone, we develop different coping strategies. Sometimes - let's be honest - sometimes, they fail. In those after-midnight hours of flashbacks and hell, I have an amazing ally. (If you own a dog, or have ever loved a dog, you know what I mean.) And I've come to understand that everybody needs this, in some form, in some way.

A few of you who may be reading this because you or someone you know is mentally ill, and you know how restorative an unconditional love can be. So I offer mine to you, even though I learned it in the most likely of places: my non-verbal dog. Without words, she exudes compassion. When you think about it, there's so much we don't say to one another in this world ... but we don't need to when we find the right peers or friends that we can count on as family.

And so LOVE to you for reading (and hopefully, understanding).
            COMPASSION to you, for whatever you might be struggling with.
            PEACE to you as well, for no extra cost, and
            SNUFFLES for everyone who needs a hug, but doesn't know how to ask.

(I know you're out there.)