I’ve had the lucky experience of working from home this past year, which has given me the liberty of hanging out with Delilah Dog every day. Like most dogs, Delilah once considered herself lucky to get a 10 minute dash around the block before I got on with getting on with the day, and she got on with whatever it is that dogs get on with when we’re not around. But now that we’re in cahoots, I’m appreciating just how much we can learn from these creatures — and today she’s been teaching me tips on, of all things — habits and stress reduction.

Delilah’s always been pretty highly-strung, probably made worse by her numerous relocations and Jenny-from-the-Bronx style origins (ahem, and her A-type mother?). It’s sad but also funny — she sometimes becomes so anxious that her teeth chatter like I remember mine doing as a cold, wet child after swimming lessons. Her anxiety and uncertainty has caused her to react, on occasion, in some fairly socially-inappropriate ways, so much so that we had to dramatically re-envisage the way we relate to her in our household (for anyone with dogs, socially-challenged or not, I can’t recommend Jan Fennell’s work highly enough!).

Through this process, I’ve learnt that Delilah’s routine is fundamental to her sense of stability in this unpredictable, human world. As someone who’s purportedly shied away from routine, probably because it felt like an intimidation to Freedom, I thought I’d have difficulty relating to this. But having forgone a normal workplace in our recent move, I’m realising that the abyss of ataxic hierarchies of hours can be just as frightening, just as confusing, and just as crippling.

Just as Delilah’s days are structured around set feeding times and familiar walks around the same blocks, with the same smells and same obstacles of early-morning drunks; so too have I learnt to structure my days with directionality and accountability that finds its roots in the mundane, but extends its impact to things as centroidal as self-worth and internal fortitude.

That’s about all that Delilah has to teach me on the subject, for now. I’ll postpone her time budgeting skills — i.e. how to sleep for 22 hours a day — for when we retire.