Jingles

By Conrad Beaubien

In 1929 it was discovered that when a dog was petted, the animal’s blood pressure was lowered. While it had long been assumed that spending time in contact with animals had a calming effect on humans, studying an animal’s response was a first and the beginning of a field of study and practice that has matured to this day.

It would also later be proven in medicine that interaction with animals helped reduce blood pressure and plasma cholesterol in humans. Petting an animal offered external focus and enhanced feelings of safety and calm as it reduced stress in our nervous system response.

Then along came Jingles, the dog companion of an American child psychotherapist, Boris Levinson. Apparently one day Jingles was lounging in the office of his owner, who between appointments was occupied at his desk. Unexpectedly, the parents of an eight-year-old boy, the boy being a patient of Levinson, arrived before their scheduled time. The child had severe symptoms of withdrawal and under care of Levinson, treatment had been challenging and ongoing. As dogs often do, Jingles ran to the boy to lick him and when the parents wanted to separate them, Levinson encouraged the engagement to continue. The child was at ease, curious about Jingles and enjoying him. From then onwards, Jingles became part of the sessions as Levinson himself joined in the play. Jingles— many animals in fact—could be companion, friend, servant, confidant and something a child could love safely without losing face. Through the sessions the patient began to be more at ease, able to reveal parts of his character and inner wants. By opening up he was then helping himself toward recovery while indicating to those around him, of his needs.

Levinson wrote about that experience in a medical journal titling the piece: The Dog as a Co-Therapist. He framed the article around the theory of ‘contact comfort’ and while the era of his publication in the 1960s held a variety of social experimentation, bringing a dog as co-therapist into the conversation rattled conventional therapy wisdom. Like in most fields, path-finding would lead to fresh territory and bit-by-bit the practice gained acceptance in professional circles. Looking into the rear view mirror acknowledges how Levinson was prophetic in stating that someday with, “our understanding of animals and their meaning to human beings… we may prescribe pets…for different emotional disorders.” He continued to say that, “the type of pet one chooses is a reflection of one’s personality.” I think he was implying that if we take a fresh look at the animals we keep, we may discover how their traits suggest resemblance to their keepers. If a reader out there gets around to doing that, please let us know how that turns out.

In a personal acknowledgement, now knowing what I have discovered about donkeys I gladly accept that I am one. Yep, I’m a donkey or at least a human facsimile of one; Except for the hay and lugging heavy loads that is. But here’s my takeaway. While I sometimes make light of my adventures, from the beginning of my trek with Thunder last fall, there has been an unfolding of lessons and of wisdom; and much, much, more. The most real and unvarnished truth of my experience I am willing to share by opening a recent page from my field notebook:

Sunday, February 21/21

‘I notice the not yet hatched burn of day spill across the fields and through my eastern window; how the waning moon wanes further to the west only soon to return in a celestial roll; how the softened night, it too dissolving beyond the rise of maple. Within the mystery, the sun creeps over the rounded edge and casts its glow on the aged and tumbling tree and before it, stands the youthful wintering beechnut, awakening tamarack and one-by-one the sun now flames the candles of the sumac, the candelabra of the ceremony of dawn.

I sit, in the quiet of my space glad that I can once again see clear. I thank the view before me, my mind now more uplifted than before when the haunts of darkness once again held me firm in the shadow lands, in the night of the moonless night and outwardly never lifting. These words I write to the many who know the paralyzing grip of depression and again the buoyancy of the spirit when the fog has lifted with seemingly the same secrecy that causes it to descend. I used to call it melancholy, that unknown shroud, but depression is how we know it now.’

Depression has followed human kind throughout time. In my personal experience, to help navigate the way needs a human voice of trained guidance and understanding— therapy in other words; additionally, food and medicine can help stabilize body chemicals, but most importantly is remedy and comfort for the soul. I speak openly about it because gone are the days when depression was solely mentioned under quieted breath; and also we now know how isolation—being disconnected from fellow beings—is but one of many possible triggers of disease within. But something else again, in my world I have learned that all things, as painful as they may be, may also in a future moment redeem themselves as gifts in terms of inner guidance.

I say all of it because I may not be walking a donkey today were it not for suffering life-long depression; also were it not for the pioneering insight of Boris Levinson and his holistic approach—body, mind and soul—aware of the medicinal power of our need to touch and be touched. Walking with Thunder has taught me to move as nature moves; to stop and listen and feel the scent in the wind; to train my ears to the sounds above the noise of the world; sounds like the screech of a marsh hawk or the caw of a faraway crow; the severing of melting ice and to know that the orchestra of a moving stream beneath the cover of winter is not unlike that of our unconscious mind always flowing yet still accessible.

And so knowing a donkey has been a reward, deliverance from the isolation that is now the root of the other pandemic of our time—depression. So that’s why I am proud to say that I have joined the donkey tribe to learn the ways; to look deep into the thinking eyes of an animal and to know that it knows the magic of a new day.