What my dog taught me about Essence

Back in 2020, in the middle of pandemic while living in Bogotá with my wife, I had a breakdown moment, when despair, ansiety and COVID was spreading through the world. Me and my wife where locked down at home, only both of us, our families in Brazil trying not to get infected and rearrange thing in life.

I saw myself losing and getting upset about the news and everything happening, then escaping to instagram one day, I started looking for pets. If you own a pet in Bogota in that time, you were able to walk in the streets, otherwise you should stay at home. I imagined what my life would be because owning a pet isn’t only instagram posts , it’s a lot of responsability. After a month looking where to adopt a dog, I found Luna, a beautiful slumdog. She was rescued in a farm after a lot of trauma of abandon, starvation and brutal mistreatment.

She couldn’t saw me at the apartment, because everytime I spoke, she trembled and showed signs of fear. Some time later, she was my shadow, everywhere I go, I was followed by her and she wanted to stay with me. I played, trained, walked, ran, I did everything a person with a 1-year-old dog would do, have fun!

Luna was always, since day 1 , a sweet dog. She doesn’t know much about catching a ball, she preffers to play with stick. She never hunted birds or bited another dog, I could spend a month without hearing she barks. In the beggining we thought that she was mute, because she doesn’t cryed or whined. She is very scared of sounds, she isn’t that brave to explore new places, but she was faster than any dog in the park.

We moved back to Brazil, she came in cabin with us on the airplane (thanks Avianca Airlines). The stayed the same, until I took her to my father’s farm and she played on dirty, jumped to the take while was in Cayak with me, hunted some ducks (never caught) one. I then realized, that dog needed estimulation to do things a dog, looking as it’s ancestral wolves would do.

After that day, I never saw her as the same, she is a animal first and covered with a civilizated layer of sweetess, good habits and playfulness.

Essence is sometimes covered by influences, training, domestication and many layers we cover our origin traits. Some parts of us are suffocated over things that for a moment can work, but we can’t carry for a long time.

One day, I left her in the same park she plays almost everyday when we go for a walk, but I saw her doing one thing that shocked me. In front of me, I found a dead bird she carried. My first impression was that the bird was dead somewhere and she brought it to me. Again, she NEVER did something like that, bringing things to me or showing me. That day was the first time.

Sad about the bird, I checked if it was warm and when I touched my finger to its chest is was hot. Poor bird, I looked at Luna’s face and I found a different dog, she droped the mask I myself putted on her or she was carrying.

I didn’t know what do in that situation, so I decide to let her do whatever she want, what her essence was saying?

I took the bird from the floor to check any sign of disease of something weird, but it was fine, except by the fact it was dead of course.

I said to Luna to give a respectul burial to the bird. She smothlessly took the bird from the floor, walked to the biggest tree and placed the bird by the tree’s trunk.

A moment later, she started to sniff the dirty and moving with her pink nose the dirty over the bird. My eyes could’t belive what she was doing, every move she did, wasn’t a playing move, it was somehow of respectul way to cover it and let it rest and merge again with nature.

I called her by the name, and took us home and now I’m writing this essay thinking about traits of my essence I covered with lies or false wishes and things that really don’t belong to me and I need to throw away from me.

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