I named him Aiden because that’s the first name that came to me after I put away the name Jack, because it was a saint’s name that came to mind. St. Aiden was a missionary to Northumberland, preaching the gospel and converting the Anglo Saxons to Christianity in Northumberland. He’s considered the patron of firefighters because his prayer slapped the wind in a different direction and turned a fire back. He also made a hunted stag invisible and saved its life from the hunters.
I should have researched his name better before I named him but bringing him into our house, “registering him”, all happened more rapidly than I could think. Maybe I should have stayed with Jack. Sometimes I switch and call him Odin because the “o” sound goes with Omalola. I consistently misgender both dogs because Oma is a big girl and Aiden is slight.
In Red Bead Woman, a beautiful story Martin Shaw has committed to writing, there is a little gray dog that finds a piece of Mare’s Tail Woman’s heart. On her way to her wedding, her husband was compelled to check a trap line and sent her down the road by herself. Of course she picks the road that takes her right to the sorceress, a monster who tears off her face, impersonates her, marries the prince and corrupts him. It’s the little gray dog who brings a piece of her heart back to Beiberikan, an old woman, who brought Mare’s Tail Woman to life in the first place. Only now she has a voice.
That’s what Aiden seems to have done. It seems as though he’s brought back my heart. (It was far gone when there were no tears when Little Dog died.) He is not an easy dog. I’m thinking he will teach me about boundaries and play.
Tuesday October 28, 2025
Aiden was a pistol, I said to Bruce when I returned from our mile long walk. It was the first time we’d walked the full mile to our neighbors’ corner fence. The sunrise had been stunning, with clouds feathered down, tinted orange. I stopped often to take pictures, the dogs dancing and curling around my legs, eyes lifted up for a treat.
When I tried to reach down and pick up the poop Aiden had dumped on a neighbor’s mowed shoulders, Aiden thought it was hilarious and grabbed for my poop bag. He likes to grab bags, paper, furniture covers. A truck was coming down the road. I lost my temper. I should have known. I should have known. I should have known. Because anger, popping and jerking the dog, just riles them up and breaks your relationship. I learned this, four dogs back with Laager, a Bernese Mountain dog. At a dog show people told me to jerk the s**t out of him to make him settle. All that did was rile him up. Then another owner began talking about how she trained at Sea World, Ohio and a whole new way of being opened up, about reinforcing behaviors the dog does right. This work stood me in good stead during my twenty years of teaching First Year Composition.
I know treats work, but each dog needs to have separate treats, so my hands, already red from cold were confused reaching for his treats in a plastic bag and Oma’s in the pouch. (They need separate treats because Oma is on a prescription diet to acidify her alkaline urine. I’m concerned those treats would have a bad effect on Aiden’s pee.)
Later when I dropped his leash in our field with fences on three sides, Aiden walked away. I called. He kept walking. I caught my breath because I did not have our fifty-foot, pink long line on him, so I could catch him up, pull him toward me. He’s a dog that could be lost. Now I see how people lose their dogs when they run out the door or open gate. After this morning, I can’t blame him. I broke his recall. It will take time to build. He’s only been with us a little over a month.
What was I thinking? I know better than to over face a young dog with these two-by-two walks. But I know it’s possible from walking our other pairs of dogs. Maybe I need to give them enough walk to do the potty thing and then walk each one alone. Maybe it will just take time and more walks to work this out.
Wednesday October 29
Today the sky wasn’t as pretty, but my goodness the air moved and was brisk. I reconfigured my treat bags, so Oma got one and Aiden got one, strapped on each side. So when Aiden gave me his eyes, he got a treat. I let both spool out and sniff, but nobody was yanking me off my feet, nobody was daring the other to play.
But when I drop into some kind of contemplative prayer, when I disappear mentally, the beasts come out to make a ruckus. This happened with Mrs. Horse too. When my mind left, she stopped, waiting for it to return. I miss the silent walks, pulling my mind back to a quiet thank you, and dropping into my senses.
I realized that giving them my attention is as much beholding as looking out at the fields, the tree, the distant woods, and saying thank you. Eugene Terekhin in “The Tenth Leper’s Secret When Gratitude Becomes Being” affirms this by telling a story from C.S. Lewis’s Letters to Malcolm:
C.S. Lewis wrote to his friend Malcolm:
“You first taught me the great principle ‘Begin where you are.’ I had thought one had to start by summoning up what we believe about the goodness and greatness of God, by thinking about creation and redemption and ‘all the blessings of this life.’ You turned to the brook and once more splashed your burning face and hands in the little waterfall and said, ‘Why not begin with this?’”
Blessedness is not about receiving blessings; it is about basking in glory wherever it is found. When we turn our face to the sun, praise happens — by itself, spontaneously. It is in the very “turning your face to the brook.” Unless we desire that, we will not return. We will go, enjoy our little gift, and show ourselves to the priests in fulfillment of duty.
And training the dogs, currying Mrs. Horse’s back, snuggling up to Bruce, eating pistachios are all those opportunities for lifting up my heart, for giving thanks.
I talked to Father Bannon, a local Orthodox priest, about how the dogs erupted in chaos when I tried to hook onto my centering prayer word, “Thank you Lord.” He told me how St Paisios would get to an important part of his talk and some dark thing would rattle the bushes. He’d tell his students, “Give that no mind and pay attention to me” with an attitude of “Oh it’s them again.”
“There are resistances when you try to pray, that maybe some tickled your pup, incited him to being unruly. Maybe it wasn’t your dog,” he said.
And my own response was not good, beyond harsh, to make Aiden stop. But when a dog bites your glove when your hand is in it well, the force came out. Aiden is one tough dog and needs limits. He compulsive about laying his teeth on everything. But so were other pups I’ve owned, so I expect he’ll grow out of it. (We had to set up our ex pen in our living room to keep Booker from mauling on Nate because like Omalola he was too mild to put Booker in his place.)
On another walk, Aiden randomly barked at nothing and then made rowdy with Omalola. I’d finally started doing what I knew to do, deflect his rowdiness. I pulled Aiden back to me by asking him to heel. He is very eager to please or should I say eager for a treat. I almost felt a presence and said to the empty air a few feet away, “The Lord rebuke you.”
Saint Porphyrios in Wounded by Love urges people find a spiritual guide if they practice prayer of the heart, which is reaching for God using the Jesus prayer: Lord Jesus Christ be merciful to me a sinner.
“…Because if you don’t get into the right order, there’s a danger of your seeing luciferic light, of living in delusion and being plunged into darkness, and then one becomes aggressive and changes character and so on” (124).
He offers a by-their-fruits-you-will-know-them means of discerning a person’s spiritual fitness. Jonathan Pageau has warned to be careful of excessively practicing this prayer, with thousands of repetitions a day because such a practice is for monks in a monastery. It can bring insanity. I’ve seen how intense spiritual practice in the form of Buddhist sitting meditation can break a person’s mind and put them on an pretty big ego trip. St. Porphyrios warns:
And if in this spiritual dimension desire I enkindled, not by your good self, but by the other self, the egotistical self, then undoubtedly you will begin to experience a pseudo joy. But in your outward life, in your relations with other people, you will be ever more aggressive and irascible and more quick tempered and fretful. These are the signs of the person who is deluded. (124)
Well this popped my bubble about how far along I am with contemplation or getting close to Jesus or whatever you call it. My quick temper with Aiden flies in the face of my own beliefs about not using force with an animal or person. (Good thing I never became a mother.) And Tyger our feral cat still doesn’t rub himself on my legs, though we have some nice chats when he appears. At any rate, I’m uncomfortable with the competition that seems to come to my head with playing the saint. Let me practice the presence and love my people and animals and keep my feet on the ground. It feels good to feel again, even if that feeling sometimes flies out as frustration with my pup.
Besides it’s Bruce, who is the saint, who empties himself, who has become a servant, sometimes so much so, when I am off in Facebook land and he is putting clothes out on the line and making the bed and setting posts for the dog fence. I should see those chores on my own, but I don’t. He is happy to walk Aiden even though Aiden was a pretty please on my part.
Day by day, Aiden seems to be calming down. Bruce has noticed he will lay by him, enjoying his petting or go in his crate on his own. Perhaps my putting him in the crate when he gets too rowdy is teaching him self-regulation. Coming to our home after being in a kennel for six months has to hit him with all kinds of stimulus and things to learn. I certainly have things to learn and practice.
I walked out as the sun dropped below the horizon with just Omalola. Darkness welled up faster than in the summer. Quiet. Off to the east and low on the horizon the sky was purple. It glowed pink and gold and then darkened. We walked out in the betwixt and between time. The darkness riding up over the sky felt like a dark quilt floating down over us. Quiet.
Do you have any stories about animals who became your teachers?
Thank you for reading/listening to this essay. It would be lovely if you became a free or paid subscriber. Thank you if you’re already one of my regular readers.
