I know I’m not the only one who views things I have done for a long time as “easy”.  I have heard other people talk this way, too.

The thing I have done longer than anything else, often alongside other things, is work with animals.

It started with pets, of course, and whatever else we could catch and hold (to learn about) for 24 hours.

Then horses came into the picture.  I started mucking stalls in exchange for riding time when I was 8 or 9.  I worked for my lessons starting at 14. 

I went to school for a BS in animal science, and got the chance to work with all kinds of farm animals.

Then exotics called me, and I spent 6 years working as a zookeeper.

After that, it was a bit of a dark time, when animals were only the ones in my house.  I now believe that stopping working outside and with animals is why I was finally diagnosed with fibromyalgia and crashed.

I came back to horses, then goats, then farm animals when I could work again.

And now I see myself as still working with animals.  Only this time, the animals I work with don’t think they are animals. 

We have been taught to believe we are above the other life forms on this planet.  That that makes us so different that we don’t have to consider our whole selves.  Unless, of course, it’s for health, or beauty, or some other “hack” to make us feel or look better.

I have talked here about how working with herds of animals has helped me to understand how to work with groups of people in unique ways.

Someone asked me to talk about how my background with animals has influenced my work.

So here are some things I learned.

Predators also flee.

Prey animals can fight like hell.

Animals don’t lie.  Domesticated animals like dogs can fawn and appease with the best of ’em.  But they don’t lie.

Every response an animal has is rooted in their biology and history, and anchored in the present.

In working with thousands of dairy goats and cows, not one udder is symmetrical or perfect.  But they all work just right.

Animals can’t use verbal language, but with experience, it becomes easy to read body language and other subtle cues.  Sometimes I find I read these cues intuitively rather than through a direct understanding of what is going on.

By observing behavior, emotions, and energy, I can get a fairly good picture of what is going on with any given animal once I know them.

You can’t repeatedly press an animal past its threshold and still have success.

Given time and care, animals find their way back to their happy place.  And rarely hold a grudge after that time and care.

In Renaturing, I work with the human animal before me. 

I can be informed by the words and story, the history I know, and the social pressures we each carry.

And at a base level, we are acting and reacting in the present.  Exactly the way our biology and history dictate. 

Often, we then need to “figure out” or “understand” why we act the way we do.  That’s the overlay of our brains.

But our bodies work at the whim of our biology, history, and present circumstances, no matter how big, beautiful, and powerful our brains are.

So I work with animals just as I have for almost all of my life.

It’s extra fun, though, because I love words, brains, reasoning, and connecting with my own species.

I love knowing that I can make some degree of difference, for the human animal in front of me, for those around them, and potentially for the other life forms on the planet.

When we connect with the understanding that we are all animals, it becomes harder to dismiss other life forms as beneath us.

There’s a leap, there, but it’s not a huge one.