Learning About Relationships and More
From My Canine Teacher
by Jeffrey W. Bloom
(2021)
First Paragraph:
I have been pondering the learning of relationships, in this case, the relationships between fellow beings for at least several decades. I realized pretty quickly that I was never taught about relationships — not how to begin them and not how to nurture, develop them, not how to tend to them, and not how to maintain them. My life has basically been learning about relationships through trial and many, many errors. These experiences have been important, but not in any way that has been easy to recollect or form into coherent and cohesive stories of learning about relationships. This particular bit of writing, however, is an attempt to begin the process of a cohesive story, with a special focus on what I learned from my previous dog, Mugetsu, a very large — in body, mind, and heart — female Doberman.