So today my friend emailed me and told me her dog crossed the Rainbow Bridge.  Hit me hard, they weren’t expecting it, and it came too close to me losing a horse and two dogs.

So I started thinking about my dogs who had just passed.  I didn’t give them as much of my attention as I think I should have.  According to other people I did, but you always wonder if you did enough.  So I thought about Holly.  She was the chow cross.  I picked her up off the street.  She never really wanted a lot of attention.  A scratch on the belly as you went by, but really was never a lap dog that looked for your constant love.  Rain, my Jack Russell, lavished more kisses on others than myself.  I always wondered if she really enjoyed being my dog.  At the end, we cleared all that up.

But I thought about the differences with all my dogs and how they each had their own needs and how much attention they would like at any given time.  Some were happy just having a home and a good meal.  One of the Catahoulas would like to be a 35 lb. lap dog.  The other just wants to hang with you some of the time.  Some of my dogs you couldn’t even go to the bathroom without.  Some didn’t care where you went.

This brought me to the book “The Five Love Languages.”  It explains how each of us feel loved by different ways.  Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch.  Apparently dogs do too.

Then my thinking evolved to the horses, and do they have different love languages?  Looking at the two standing in front of me at the time, indeed they do.  Zoey loves for me just to sit in the pasture.  She’ll come up and just hang with me while I hold a one-sided conversation.  Friday on the other hand likes physical touch.  Grooming, bathing, having her face wiped with a cool wash cloth.  Zoey loses patience when I don’t groom her fast enough.  Fri could spend all day being fussed over.  Then my mind wandered to my other horses.  Dawn loved hanging with people.  I always said she’d be happy to sit on the couch with you, eat popcorn and watch TV.  Some liked the personal attention and some just liked knowing what time dinner was served.

I spoke with a vet friend about this and she said it all comes back to the Chinese and the Five Elements.  Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, Wood.  How each person and horse is one of them, and how we either complement each other, or lock horns.

There is more to this life than we can imagine.  I can’t even begin to think I could learn all of this and figure it out at this point in my life.

So back to my original thought.  We all have a different need as to how we feel loved.

When you have nothing else to think about while cleaning stalls, think what makes each of your animals feel the most loved, and act on it before the chance slips away.

It wouldn’t hurt in our human relationships either.  What makes you feel loved by your animals or a person?  I love when an animal just wants to be with me for no reason.  I guess I feel that way about my husband and friends too.

Stall cleaning thinking.