Dog days of summer could help your heart

I am really hoping I don't offend or disappoint any of my readers with what I am about to admit, but here goes: I am one of those people who actually resonate with the statement, "God spelled backward is 'dog'." (Or is it "Dog spelled backward is God"?)

If you think this is wacky, then you probably haven't had the pleasure of a pooch nuzzling you awake from a Sunday nap ... or you haven't met Bedini and Binoche, my two French bulldogs who, if not godlike, are as close to heaven as I'm likely to get.

Since this is a health column, let me quickly establish the canine's credentials in this regard. Consider this study reported in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, October 2005. Following up on research that has shown that having a dog for a pet significantly reduces stress and increases survival after a heart attack, the authors found that having a pet lowered levels of cardiovascular arousal and made stress less of a nasty force on heart rate and blood pressure. The pet owners tended to see stressors more as challenges rather than threats.

Dogs have been our pals now for going on 12,000 years. Their wolf ancestors learned that humans weren't so bad; sharing their food scraps made more sense than exhausting hunts. Thus started their centuries-old keen interest in paying avid attention to our odd ways of communicating.

Enter Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer seen regularly on National Geographic Network. Anyone who has been around me socially in the past couple months has heard me wax poetic about his book "Cesar's Way." I find myself mining it for wisdom, not only for how to better relate to my dogs, but also to my own species.

One of his primary theses is that energy is the universal language, one that we have in common with dogs as well as each other. He distinguished between "calm assertive" energy, which is an "obvious and uncontestable strength" and other forms of getting our point across, such as domination, aggressiveness, bullying, overpowering with angry vocalizations.

As Cesar writes in his book, "In most everyday situations, being angry-aggressive can work against you -- it's simply not an energy-efficient way to get things done, and it's really not good for your blood pressure. An angry-aggressive dog would not make a good pack leader because the other dogs would perceive him as unstable."

Who amongst us really listens to some unbalanced idiot? Certainly not my male Frenchie Bedini. When I yelled and lunged at him as he lifted his leg on our Christmas tree this past holiday, he merrily leapt away, planted his front paws, positioned his cute butt in the air with tail wagging wildly, as if to say: "Come on big boy, let's mix it up!"

Considering energy as the universal language of emotion has become a powerful insight for me, making me realize how important it is to maintain a balanced energy, not only with Bedini, but in my other relationships.

We have much to learn from our animal companions. Maybe it is how they observe us and their world without judgment and evaluation, accepting what is on its own terms. Maybe it is how they live in harmony with their natures and with nature. Maybe it is the unmitigated joy they have for eating what is put before them, for the pleasure of our very company.

"Though it may be a blow to our oversize human egos, the truth of the matter is, we need dogs more than they need us ... We may not even know it consciously, but they are our lifelines to a part of ourselves we are at the brink of losing altogether."

So sayeth Cesar.

Dr. Michael O.L. Seabaugh, a Cape Girardeau native, is a clinical psychologist who lives and works in Santa Barbara, Calif. Contact him at mseabaugh@semissourian.com For more on the topics covered in Healthspan, visit his Web site: www.HealthspanWeb.com.