I am Bunny: How a "Talking" Dog Taught Me Everything I Need to Know About Being Human

 

“Trust creates peace.” (Anonymous quote).

 Trust is the foundation of every healthy relationship. Relationships with dogs are not the exception to this rule. Genuine friendships with dogs are based on trust and communication.

 Alexis Devine has always been eager to do her best to optimize communication with her adopted dogs. In a delightful friendly style, Alexis shares her personal journey with Bunny, a dog she adopted three years before publishing her book. Alexis’s curiosity, kindness and sense of wonder led her to seek new ways of understanding Bunny. For this reason, she resorted to the use of buttons that her furry friend accepted with enthusiasm; Bunny uses them to express herself. These buttons play recorded words when pressed.

 Alexis Devine’s exploration eventually led her to connect with researchers who study dog behavior, and now she is collaborating with their work. Interestingly, the choice of buttons kindles conversations with her dog, interactions that reveal fascinating insights into Bunny’s thoughts, emotions and feelings. This kind of communication shines a light on the ways Bunny perceives the world around her. If you’ve ever wondered whether dogs have night dreams, you will learn about this topic in her book…

  In addition to the anecdotes and dialogues she shares, there are relevant snippets of Alexis’s life intertwined with Bunny’s experiences. Alexis shares aspects about herself, vulnerabilities and challenges she had to contend with, and a personal adventure of self-discovery, growth and transformation. She also carves out interesting reflections about life in general, inviting the readers to appreciate situations from refreshing perspectives.

 There are a few chapters about research on animal communication interspersed throughout her book. I chose to read these chapters separately because I did not like to be distracted from the story of Alexis and Bunny.

 Alexis Devine is an artist and entrepreneur from Seattle, Washington. She is also part of an ongoing canine cognition research study at the Comparative Cognition Lab at UCSD. “Her goal is to further our understanding of the power of connection and importance of empathy, meeting her dogs where they are and understanding them on their terms to facilitate trust and promote an environment that supports them as the incredible creatures they are.”

 You can learn more about Alexis Devine and her experiences with Bunny by listening to this brief interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id6jvQPzEQo

 

 There are various photographs of Bunny and Alexis in this book, but they don’t reveal the essence of their unique connection. Most pictures showcase Alexis’s unconventional clothing style and makeup. There is nothing wrong about an artist marketing her art, but we somehow miss out the energy of the bond between Alexis and Bunny in those images. On the other hand, the heartwarming photos of her parents spending time with Bunny truly reveal the spirit of their relationship:

 

  Books that focus on communication with dogs are of special interest to me. I experience a deep connection with my own furry friends. Words can hardly describe the bond that blooms when we care deeply for them. Every moment with them is a precious gift that I don’t take for granted.

 You can also check my review on Canine Confidential.by Marc Bekoff.

Have fun with these supplementary links!

 

https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/dogs-that-saved-lives

 

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/13/health/playing-with-dogs-affects-brain-waves-study-wellness/index.html

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9534402/

 

The Science of Sleep: Stop chasing a good night's sleep and let it find you

 

 May is Mental Health Awareness month. The Science of Sleep by Heather Darwall-Smith is an excellent resource to support your mental health and live up to the promise of your highest potential.

 During the mysterious process of sleep the body rests, but the brain is active. Scientists, authors and musicians have come up with relevant ideas while dreaming. For example, The Rolling Stones, Billy Joel and Paul McCartney said that some of their created lyrics and melodies appeared in their dreams. Similarly, Dimitri Mendeleev, the creator of the periodic table of elements, saw the complete table in a dream.

 Like regular exercise and healthy eating habits, sleep is essential to your wellbeing. It is normal to have a bad night every now and then, so there is no reason to be concerned about enduring one, but actions can be taken to optimize your sleep.

 The Science of Sleep is a comprehensive, well-researched book to help you understand the process and to follow basic sleep hygiene measures that support your wellbeing. It contains suggestions, recent discoveries and ideas to empower you to slip into a pleasant slumber.

 Why is sleep important?

 Sleep helps to consolidate learning and memory; it boosts the immune system, balances our emotional states, and plays a vital role in repairing and restoring tissues in the body. People who don’t sleep well regularly have trouble regulating their appetite; the reason for this is well explained in her book, and it has to do with the release of chemicals in the body in response to the lack of sufficient sleep.

  Poor sleep may have a deleterious effect on your judgement of situations and people, and it has the potential to impair your performance skills.

     A few basic behaviors should be considered to improve the quality and quantity of sleep: avoid caffeine after 2:00 pm; stay physically active regularly, but don’t be too active when the time of going to bed is approaching; use stress management strategies daily; be consistent with routines; lower the lights at night to support the synchronization of your circadian rhythm and avoid watching TV at night.

  Remember to create a “sanctuary” in your bedroom, a safe haven where you feel at ease and ready to chill out and fall asleep.

   The number of hours needed to sleep is different for every person. Feeling refreshed and ready to start your day after a full night sleep is an indication that you are doing well. However, it is common for most people to wake up in the middle of the night. When this happens, try guided imagery. This may sound intimidating and complex, but it is a very simple thing to do: let your mind focus on the image of a pleasant place where you feel safe and comfortable. If you don’t fall asleep after calming your mind through this gentle strategy, get out of bed and do something relaxing. For example, read or try a foot massage.

 

The Science of Sleep by Heather Darwall-Smith contains colorful diagrams and illustrations that make the presentation interesting and engrossing. I love that the illustrations show people of different races. 

 There is information on how to deal with specific situations, like traveling to a different time zone, changing work shifts and various other topics.

 Another remarkable aspect to highlight is the inclusion of medical and psychological disorders that affect sleep.

  The only pages I did not like about the book are the ones on sleep and babies. It comprises two pages with a very rigid approach to the matter. If this is something you are interested in, I recommend the book The Attachment Parenting Book: A common sense guide to understanding and nurturing your baby by Martha Sears and William Sears.

   To sum it up, I highly recommend The Science of Sleep, and the section about dreams is gripping. Journaling one’s dreams is a fascinating adventure you may want to explore. 

You can visit the author's site here.

Thank you for reading this post.

Have a good night and sweet dreams.

My heart is with the families of the people who died in Buffalo, New York, due to the horrifying shootings caused by a white supremacist. 

 

 

 

Happy birthday, Jorge Luis Borges

 "A writer-- and, I believe, generally all persons-- must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art."

"Writing is nothing more than a guided dream."

"The mind was dreaming. The world was its dream."

"You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened."

"A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his voice and the changeable and durable images it leaves in his memory. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships."

  I've been reading short stories and essays from "Labyrinths", a compilation of some of his work.
  How can  I describe the originality of his work? I can say that his stories are inspiring to the mind. He writes about the infinite, dreams, labyrinths and immortality. He creates imaginary and symbolic worlds while playing with the possibilities of time and space.
  His stories have historical, literary and philosophical allusions. Even if you can't grasp everything he intends to communicate, reading his stories awakens and fuels your imagination.
 Borges opens doors to unknown infinite corridors in the tunnel of the mind. He invites you to see the universe from imaginary perspectives. The power of his originality is intense. His prose is poetic and profound.
  Borges never wrote a novel. He crafted short stories, essays and poems. He identified himself first as a reader, then as a poet, and finally as a prose writer. Sometimes the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction  in his stories are blurred.
  Borges was born in Argentina, but he was nurtured on universal literature. His spiritual homeland was the world. In Argentina he was at odds with the Peronist dictatorship. For political reasons he lost his job as a librarian.
   "Any great and lasting book must be ambiguous, " he said.
   His international recognition came with the 1961 Formentor Prize, which he shared with Samuel Beckett.
  I shared a couple of his poems on my blog not long ago:

Everness
The Art of Poetry

Happy birthday, Jorge Luis Borges. Thank you for your legacy.

The Enigmas (poem)

I who am singing these lines today
Will be tomorrow the enigmatic corpse
Who dwells in a realm, magical and barren,
Without a before or an after or a when.
So say the mystics. I say I believe
Myself undeserving of Heaven or of Hell,
But make no predictions. Each man's tale
Shifts like the watery forms of Proteus.
What errant labyrinth, what blinding flash
Of splendor and glory shall become my fate
When the end of this adventure presents me with
The curious experience of death?
I want to drink its crystal-pure oblivion,
To be forever; but never to have been.