dog on a roof
Dogs can teach you a lot about how changing your perspective can move your healing forward.
I had just brought Kiera, one of my neighbor’s huskies, home from running around the neighborhood. My neighbor and I were trying to figure out how she had escaped their house so early in the morning (it was 7am). An unexpected movement caught my eye.
“Is that a dog on your roof?” I asked her.
“LUNA!” Their other dog was, indeed, on the roof.
Look closer at the photo. See that open second floor window with no screen? It seems both dogs climbed out the window. Kiera jumped off the roof to go roam the streets and Luna decided it was too big of a jump, made a U turn up to the top roofline, and got stuck.
We had to get her off the roof.
My husband brought his extra tall ladder over, climbed on the roof, and tried to coax her with fresh bacon close enough to be able to grab her. I even went up there to try to calm her down enough to come to me.
Luna was having none of it.
Eventually, my neighbor’s husband got home from work. First he tried to climb out the same window, but once he was up there, he realized the roof was too steep to try to bring her in that way, especially since it had started raining. So he went around the way we had gone up, and he was able to get a leash on her and half coax half drag her down. He said that once he had the leash clipped in, she snapped out of her fear and started following him.
Did you know that huskies can climb down ladders?
I’ve been thinking about this story, and what Luna might have been feeling.
For me, it’s easy to think about Luna and her experience, to empathize with what she might be experiencing. Her part in the story reminds me of those times when I have had my trauma responses triggered, activating my sympathetic nervous system to turn on. Those fight/ flight/ fawn/ freeze behaviors take over, accompanied by a “how’d I get here?” sensation. Just like Luna, stuck on the roof, scared and confused.
But Luna wasn’t the only one there.
With a little bit of effort, I shift my perspective to think about the whole picture, as if I am widening the focus of a camera. There were lots of us around to make sure she was safe. We called people for help. We kept talking to Luna, physically getting close to her for reassurance, keeping her as calm as we could, until the right person (in this case, her primary attachment person who had the leash and enough strength and confidence to climb to the top roofline in the rain to connect with her) came along that could guide her down.
It all depends on how you look at it.
Each one of us there had our own unique experience with our role in this story, and we each had our individual reactions and perspectives. Same story, different experiences.
Do you have a story that you are telling yourself?
What’s the story? Who are the players? If this story was a movie, can you widen the viewpoint to see any new information? Often when we get stuck in a story that is triggering our sympathetic nervous system, it physically narrows our vision as part of the fight/flight/freeze/fawn response.
Pushing yourself to widen your field of vision, even in your imagination, can help you regulate and calm your nervous system.
This story is also a great metaphor for working with others experiencing a trauma response, but that will have to wait for next time.
Printed with permission from Luna’s owners. :)
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