Teachings of Dog: Finding Your Voice

​If there's one thing for which Schnauzers are well known, it's their voice.  Loud, joyous, frequent, and sometimes embarrassing, has been our previous experience over the past 30-odd years of sharing life with Schnauzers, so to come across a silent one was odd, to say the least... For the first few weeks of his life with us, Mungo didn't bark.

Maybe he had learned, in the puppy farm in which he had spent the first five years of life, that barking was futile - at best, it could have achieved nothing for him - and even when his new life brought him two little Lhasa sisters, who do bark at such exciting events as The Postman, or Things Outside The Garden Wall, he still never uttered a sound.

In his silence we could read the history of unmet needs; the total absence of any sense of deserving anything - in human terms, he had no self-worth whatsoever.  In that previous life, where life itself had no value except price, he had been worth less than nothing.  To bark would mean that his voice was worthy of being heard, and clearly this was not the case.

The very, very first time we heard him bark, I almost couldn't believe it... such a little, rusty bark it was, and high-pitched... he was trying to join in with his sisters at the time.  Gradually, he began to find his real, authentic voice - little by little, until now it is loud, joyous, frequent and sometimes embarrassing - a true, beautiful, Schnauzer voice.

Mungo's Teachings:

• You are always worthy of being heard; nobody has the right to tell you otherwise.
• Our needs are more likely to be met when we understand how to ask.
• Whenever you need to sing, give yourself permission to sing with your whole heart, and your true, authentic voice; it will be the most beautiful music in the universe.