For Love of Ike -- A Lesson in Creating Our Best Environment

There's no mistaking that we create our own environment.  No matter how much we may want to credit/blame external factors with our moods, our circumstances or our being, the truth always comes back to the fact that we exist in an environment of our creation.  I recently have had this conversation about "creating our present moment" with a peer coach, a client and my sister.  And as my husband and I welcome a new puppy into our household, I am reminded of a conscious choice we (my husband and I) made to create a new energy in our household nearly twelve years ago with a different new puppy.  And of the difference it made.  

Puppies are wonderful and fun and delightful -- and trying and exasperating and exhausting.  I always tell my pals with puppies to remember that it is normal to want to take them back (to wherever) within the first week.  And as I reach that point with our new little guy, I am reminded that he (and we) will thrash or thrive in the environment that we create.  I know this story well you see, at least in part, because of Ike.

It's no accident that the little dog in the adjacent photo is flying like Superman. That is ike and Ike is super.  In fact, Ike just may be perfect.  He is a twelve-year-old Brussels Griffon, who we invited to come and live with us at the end of 2000. As we made plans for his adoption, we promised to each other, and to Ike, to raise him in an environment of positive energy (only positive energy) -- and oh, how that energy filled the space of our home. Like the echoing rings around a pebble dropped into a pool of water, that little pebble of a dog has been an incredible teacher and peacekeeper in our home for more than a decade.  

I sometimes call Ike the dog who saved my life.  The story I tell around that description is that he relieved me of a sadness of loss and grief following the death of Kahlua, our fourteen-year-old Sharpei.  The true story is so much more.  It is tied to the way we, my husband and I, agreed to welcome him into our home and raise him -- of the environment we decided to create.  While we loved our Sharpei, our training methods with her were less than perfect.  This time around there would be no raised voices, frustrated responses, or end-of-a-tough-day tension delivered with any training.  We promised to create for this tiny being an environment of loving-kindness.  It turned out to be just the thing we all needed.  Life became more quiet; our noticing of our world increased in the most subtle and significant of ways. 

The change fitted my understanding of my emerging Buddhist nature.  It held the potential to transform my relationship with myself and others – all tied up in a four-pound puppy who never seemed to notice the burden of change.  He never complained that this was too much to expect of a twice-displaced Brussels Griffon (with eyes so popped that his walker once explained  to us that she feared they would escape their sockets in a burst of puppy excitement).   Ike joined us agreeably and appreciatively.  In our first two weeks together he and I formed a strong bond, thanks to a boss who allowed me to work from home during that time -- my "caninerty leave," I suppose.  Cliff and I kept our promise to create positive space and Ike filled that space with joyful awareness, which bounced back to us in the nicest of ways.

One promise I didn’t keep to Ike in the early years was to retire and spend more time with him by the time he was two.  These days, I have that luxury as I work from home, creating a  schedule mostly of my choosing.  And Ike's as happy as he’s ever been. He is my devoted and loyal partner in a journey to relax into life and find inner peace.  

And now, with the new puppy, Ike is teaching me again the lesson of creating our environment -- and of tending that which we create. 

We can all learn a lot from a dog . . .  

Postscript:  People like to ponder how "Ike" got his name.  It seems predictable that two West Pointers named Ike for a certain Five-Star General and President our alma mater produced.  Alas, it was nothing so thoughtful.  Quite simply, from the first time I saw his picture (he was an Internet baby, if you will), our Ike looked like an Ike.  With a tight little frown tucked into a tiny mustachioed face, alert ears cocked forward in anticipation and a crisp, upright posture he looked to be game for anything.  And he is.  Over the years Ike has dawned a tiny life vest to join me in the kayak, clipped into a backpack to ride on Cliff’s back for biking on the tandem and become well known to friends and merchants alike as he joins us in our travels.