Gentle... Gentle...

Archie Martin

My Sister trains her dogs to take snacks from her hand slowly by coaching them: gentle... gentle. It keeps fingers safe, makes the process more memorable, and sets the tone for how she wants the connection with her furlings to be.

The last couple of years she has taken to using this phrase whenever any of us family-members are teasing too harshly, being too direct, or wearing our crabby-pants. It is usually effective. We back-off and change our tone or add in something nice to recoup from our nastiness.

This has now become a call for how I want all difficult situations to be handled. When I am dealing with anyone I care about I'm practicing and training myself to take a deep breath and see how I want to feed to -or have them feed me- the criticism, bad news, frustration or annoyance.

Can I be more gentle in my tone. My understanding of what they might be going through. The way I want to interact no-matter-what with them. Gentle. Gentle.

Can we be more gentle, sympathetic, and patient when dealing with ourselves and others? It's a worthy trick if we can train ourselves to. And there is the treat of more kindness and calm on the other end. Very rewarding, less ruff, ruff ;)

Thanks Sis! xo