What a sweet, adorable dog Jaffa was. She was sensitive and a strong character in an assertive, gentle and sensible way, where she could be, and when I listened. For most of Jaffa’s life she was understood and I was able to help her in many ways especially when it came to health related issues and that help. The ways I helped her came in the form of everyday lifestyle choices and caring for her by putting in boundaries that were suitable for her wellbeing. They count for a lot.

Jaffa was there before and as I began my journey of learning how dogs communicate, now I could see what was really going on for the dogs and that was eye opening. Luckily I was able to help Jaffa a lot in her life and manage her various Cavalier diseases to make her comfortable and enrich her life at each stage.

In my job as a pet sitter, Jaffa was a client’s dog. She’d been in my care as a young puppy and I had looked after her most of the weekdays since she was just a few months old. When my client became pregnant she asked if I would take Jaffa on and naturally I said I would, thinking she’d fit in and wouldn’t be much trouble! But Jaffa was a really special sweet dog who melted my heart. I hadn’t appreciated her at first, I didn’t see her fully until I became wiser and could understand her communication and that’s when we became really close. And now I’ll always see each dog for who they are, the beauty in every one and have empathy for each of them. These days I see a certain amount of what they say but I guess we’ll never know exactly what it’s like to be a dog, though sometimes it’s as if you really do feel their feelings.

Jaffa taught me a lot and she was able to put some of her own boundaries in, for me. She was a smart dog. I used to take her running with me and she ‘appeared’ eager to come along but within a few hundred metres she’d stop to sniff and just wouldn’t come with me, with no amount of encouragement. It was a ploy to go to the park to sniff. What else could she have done to get her point across?

This was strong communication and although I hadn’t learnt about that yet I stopped taking her with me but only because it interrupted my run!! Clever dog. Like many other people, I thought dogs would like to run, and they do but on their own terms, when they feel like it, and if it makes sense to them, not because I wanted to run a few miles with my dogs in tow. I had pictured my dogs and I running together in harmony but that was my agenda, not theirs.