The Benefits of a Power Outage

This weekend my power went out for over fifteen hours.  It was an adjustment as I started the day, as I realized how many things I couldn't do without power . . . I couldn't cook anything, I couldn't get on the internet, I couldn't watch TV, I couldn't use the house phone, and with only a small amount of battery left on my cell phone, I had to use my phone sparingly.

Kino, on the other hand, was very happy that we didn't have power.  Since he is normally competing with the phone, the computer and the TV for my attention - he got the benefit of having all my attention all day long.  He was in heaven.

We played ball, we played tug of war with his rope toys, we went for a long walk, we played ball some more.  He thought it was the greatest day ever. It seemed like every activity we did on Saturday centered around him, since I couldn't really do anything else.  At one point, I thought about the fact that I could dust and clean the toilets without power, but much to Kino's delight, I decided it would be more fun to play with him than do those chores and went back outside and resumed the game of toss with the tennis balls.

It got me thinking about how much our animals must enjoy power outages . . . when we don't have anything "electronic" to pull our attention away from them.  They undoubtedly relish in the benefits of our lack of electricity as they get to soak up so much more of our time and attention.  It made me wonder if we shouldn't act as if we're having a power outage for a few hours every day, regardless of whether we really have power or not.  Since animals don't need electricity, they probably wish we didn't rely on it as much as we do.

Yesterday, I was with a client, giving her dogs Reiki treatments.  She mentioned that she was bothered by the fact that her dogs will not settle down and go to sleep at night until she turns off the TV.  Before she could even finish asking me why that was, the dogs told me that it's not good for people (or animals) to sleep with the TV on and they wanted her to get better sleep.  I thought it was interesting that there was yet another related piece of evidence that our dependency on electricity isn't always a good thing.

This morning, I had to call the phone company to clear up a billing problem.  It was an arduous task that kept me on the phone for close to an hour.  During that time, Kino let me know how he felt about the fact that I could once again use the phone . . . he got into my purse and decided to destroy my favorite hair claw that he found in there, by biting off each one of the "teeth" that used to hold my hair into place. Clearly, he was happier during the power outage when he had all of my attention and didn't have to compete with the phone.  :-)

So, aside from not putting my purse on the floor anymore, my other take away from this is that it's probably a good idea to "unplug" a little more often and give him more of my undivided attention.

How often do you "unplug"?  I bet your animals would appreciate having more of your undivided attention.  Give it a try and see if there are any benefits to you as well!