Ritual & Routine

Zoe

Our dog wakes up at the same time every day and before heading out to the living room for breakfast, walks over to my side of the bed, places her right front paw on the bed and stares at me. If I don’t reach over and pet her, she’ll issue a low growl until I do.

Having gotten Zoe when she was six, it was a pretty easy fit for us for her to become part of our family. We didn’t have to worry about potty or leash training; she bonded pretty quickly and we established a good set of routines.

She likes her routines and if anything, I see my job as trying to limit her stress by sticking to them. Watching her for the last seven years now (she’s 13), I speculated that a consistent routine gave her a sense of control…and dogs don’t really have much control over their lives. Of course, this has been mostly beneficial for dogs as a species, but at the individual level living in an environment where your basic life necessities are controlled and at the whims of another species is probably pretty stressful.

So it was in watching her that I developed my own “sort of” theory about the importance of routine and rituals. I spelled it out here and generally refer to the importance of the “container” vs. the non-importance of the “contained.” The argument is that what is important is the ritual not the actual contents of the ritual. For humans, as well as dogs, we live in a world…