For the Love of Fire Dogs

I got my first dog in veterinary school. She had been running loose in Lafayette, Indiana and was hit by a car. Her left front leg was badly broken. The person who hit her brought her to the veterinary school but was unable to pay her expenses. She stayed in the veterinary school on pain medications while the staff searched fruitlessly for her owner. Finally a decision had to be made. I had fallen in love with her and would sit in her kennel on my free time. She would lounge on my lap, nuzzle my neck, and stare up at me with her deep soulful eyes. So I volunteered to adopt her. I named her Nin.

To make a long story short, the surgeons fixed her leg, she got through the recommended postoperative time of rehabilitation and cage-rest, and she did not slow down until the day I had to say goodbye in 2011.

My husband recently described her as a “dog’s dog.” She loved us, but she had no interest in pleasing us. She reacted to praise and admonishment with the same expression of breathless excitement. She failed obedience class. I know I could have worked with her more, but I was a new graduate working long hours, and, to be honest, I didn’t have it in me. She pulled me down more hills in pursuit of rabbits than I can remember. When she was under anesthesia once for a minor procedure, my technician shaved a lightening bolt into the fur on her hip - because Bolt would have been a much more appropriate name for her than Nin.

After Nin passed, I found a foster dog that needed a home and convinced my husband that we should meet her. Her foster mom brought her to our house and sat with us in the living room while this new dog, a suspected Jack Russel Terrier mix, darted around the house, bounced off of furniture, checked all of the windows, tracked the scents of our cats, and ignored us completely. “She’ll settle down eventually,” the foster mom assured us; she was wrong.

If you have looked at my website or Facebook page, you have seen Madeleine. She is Meridian Mobile Veterinary Care’s unofficial mascot, and I adore her. My husband loves her too, but he has said on more than one occasion that he will be picking our next dog.

I do, apparently, have a type when it comes to dogs. But it wasn’t until I began studying acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine (TCVM) that I had an explanation for my choices.

Ancient Chinese medicine practitioners based a large part of their understanding of the human body on what they observed in the natural world. They watched the cycle of the seasons and related that to the cycle of our lives - starting with birth in the spring and ending with aging and death in the winter. Over time, they began equating each season with a different element and each element with different organs in the body and different aspects of personality and health.

It is an incredibly complex system, but here are the basics. There are five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. As explained above, each element is associated with a different season, different organs, and different personality traits. The elements are typically depicted in a circle. Each element is the parent of the element that comes after it (and nurtures the element accordingly) and the child of the element that precedes it (and can be draining - in a good, childlike way). The element two places back in the circle is the grandparent. In ancient Chinese culture, the grandparents were the disciplinarians, so in TCVM theory, the grandparent elements control their grandchildren and help to keep the whole system in balance.

This helped me understand my canine preferences. I’m pretty earthy, but more metal. We metals are the rule followers and organizers. We are confident and consistent but can be perceived as aloof. We like things to run smoothly and calmly. Come to think of it, “keep calm and carry on,” could be our motto. The problem is, when I am left to my own metal devices, I can go overboard with the organization, planning, and general perfectionism. It isn’t fun.

So, based on TCVM theory, one way to combat an out of control element is to utilize the grandparent. In this case, fire is the grandparent of metal. Nin and Madeleine - poster puppies for the fire element.

Let’s look at the traits of fire animals:

Easily excited - check
Extroverted - check
Love to be loved - check
Tend to be the center of the party - check
Difficult to calm down - check
Aggressively pursue ambitions - check
Prone to exaggeration - check (Madeleine screams like a banshee every time I trim her nails)

So I believe that I gravitate toward fire dogs because they help control my metal tendencies. Nothing teaches you to let go of control and relax like an adorable, loving dog that never listens to a word you say. Walks with Nin were a game of running away from other dogs and people before she spotted them and avoiding squirrels at all costs. Madeleine makes having company difficult because she is constantly trying to get on their laps and sip their cocktails (I had nothing to do with her taste for alcohol - I blame her original owner). Things are unpredictable and often messy. But such is the well balanced life of a metal owner and a fire dog. And I wouldn’t want it any other way!

If you are interested in learning more about the five element theory of Chinese medicine, you can follow this link to a personality quiz: http://nqa.org/about-nqa/assess-your-energy/

I think it’s fascinating and can teach us a lot about how we relate to other people and our pets!

Barbara L. Butchko DVM, CVA | Meridian Mobile Veterinary Care | Charlotte, NC

The Heart Meridian