This past June we adopted a husky-malamute-kitchen sink from the wonderful TrueBlue Pet Rescue in Aurora, Colorado. The name she came with, Shiloh, means “peace” in Hebrew. Given the number of favorite shoes she’s ingested, the number of times she has induced heart conditions by slipping out the door and into traffic, and the radical distrust for strange dogs that she would make clear by lunging at them with bared teeth, it’s easy to think that whoever named her held a PhD in sarcasm.
In the early months after adoption, in the full throes of puppyhood (at six months, almost as big as our 11-year-old husky-shepherd mix, Zuki, but with the energy of a nuclear-powered pack of fireworks), I wondered if we’d gotten in too deep. We’ve had husky mixes for years, but the challenges she brought could occasionally reduce me to tears. I’d wanted a puppy I could cuddle with and train up, that would happily shadow me everywhere. Shiloh, while wanting very much to be good, had already made up her mind about her priorities (food, hunting anything that moved, e.g. the neighbor’s chickens, and dominance), and she was big enough to make a serious effort in getting them.
We enrolled in obedience classes with the seriously rockin’ Rockin’ E, where I worked on patience and persistence, and she worked on respect and restraint. These days, she’s laid off shoes in favor of stray socks, she’ll stay for a few heartbeats when the door opens, and we can pass by other dogs without incident if I liberally ply her with treats. Together, we’re figuring out how to use our best valley girl “whatever” on barking dogs and how to let squirrels and rabbits live to ripe old age on the lawns of Laramie.
Looking back on these past few months with her, I think I understand better what her name really means, what “peace” may actually be. It isn’t some exterior condition of perfect harmony and absence of conflict, it’s a state I can sometimes access when I meet Shiloh where she is and find a well of understanding for helping her out of a past rife with insecurity and maybe fear from being abandoned on the streets of Denver. There is a reason she is the way she is and there is a way I can help her through it and hopefully out the other side. What it requires of me is to forget myself for awhile; to think less of some goal I’ve set for my dog than of what this firework of a soul (yes, shout out Katy Perry) needs to be settled within herself.
Peace, it turns out, may be a place somewhere outside myself where judgement is suspended in favor of compassion.
Life in the Multiverse 