Jealous or Zealous? Flower Essences Can Help
by Meg Harrison
While doing research for a client, I discovered the word jealous comes from the Latin word for zealous. This new fact made me take a look at what I had always observed to be “jealous” behavior, defined as: resentfully envious. Are jealous animals simply zealous, filled with eagerness and interest? Or are they insecure? Spoiled? Trying to teach us a lesson? Or just plain crazy? (I’m kidding.)
Animals With(out) Human Emotions
Animals arrive in our lives without a written history explaining possible quirks, phobias, and negative behaviors. With limited vocabulary to explain confusing or complicated behaviors, we offer excuses for their excessive personality traits. Diagnosing emotional problems in animals has its limitations since we are restricted to imposing our vocabulary on them. The fancy word for this is anthropomorphism, defined as: attributing of human characteristics to gods, objects, animals, etc. In this vein, we tend to assign our limitations to the animals, emotional limitations including jealousy, pettiness, anger, possessiveness, etc.
Bo, the young Quarter Horse, loved me. He would look forward to my visits and the routine. My friend had several horses and we always followed the same order as to when, how, and where we worked them. Bo was always first out of his paddock because he was the youngest and had the least patience. Routinely, the first thing I would do after arriving is grab his halter and hang my shirt on its hook. One day, I arrived and their retired police horse needed attention first, which changed our and Bo’s routine. Following my routine, I hung my shirt on top of his halter.
We got the old horse comfortable and returned to get Bo out of his stall. His halter was there but my shirt was missing. Bo was always “at the ready” by the gate but, now he was outside in the corner of his turn-out. I’m not sure what I noticed first: the odd look on his face, or my muddy shirt in three pieces at his feet. He had thrashed, ripped and stomped on my shirt. The look on his face was half remorse and half triumph, as he knew he got his point across to us – Don’t change the ordered routine, because it changes status.
Flower Essences to the Rescue
Star of Bethlehem flower essence is the absolute best for shock, hurt feelings, confusion, and emotional experiences like getting bit, stepped on, or clawed – depending on your animal of choice. It was the only single remedy that I took to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. One bottle went with a fellow volunteer to the hospital with a life-threatening spider bite returning for his second surgery. He asked me for it because he had witnessed the help it gave to hundreds of cats and dogs arriving daily from the floodwaters of New Orleans. This essence is part of the blend made famous in the aftermath of Katrina called SHELTER BLEND.
Star of Bethlehem is excellent for do-overs. The best example is when you need to apologize or back up the clock and re-address an incident. It’s incredibly helpful for times when you do not know what happened but the animal is “off”, a technical term for “don’t have a clue as to what is wrong.” It does not matter how long ago the incident happened; essences will help. If the transgression is recent, use essences more often, beginning with possibly every 10-15 minutes for the first hour and hourly for the next few hours until you see calm return to the animal. For chronic behavior or older incidents, use four times daily for a longer period of time, maybe a few weeks.
Blending Star of Bethlehem with Angel’s Trumpet (used for self-empowerment) allows the animal the capacity to use discernment, judge a situation, and react appropriately. One owner said: “It gave my animal a pause button.”
Tiger Lily essence can be used in cases where there is loss of status, insecurity, or difficulty believing in oneself. This essence provides a sophisticated focus encouraging learning and understanding while giving the animal a moment to change confusion, fear, or worry into mental and emotional confidence. We call this blend: COURAGE.
Indulged or Spoiled?
Whom should we pay attention to first? Whom should we feed first? The fastest and strongest, is my (safest) answer. Some believe the only answer is to give in to the negative behavior and its consequences, like smoothing riffs at doggy parks, calming nerves at feeding time, granting leniency, and giving excuses for crazy behavior when company arrives. I know people who rearrange furniture, schedules, and even vacation plans to suit their animals’ idiosyncrasies and eccentricities.
I know there are fancier words than “pushy pigs” for dominant behavior but everyone can relate to the one cat that fights, growls and hogs the food. Or the horse pushing a shoulder into you or butting you with his head. And the dog who loves to play but always wants to be over the top of the other dog or stealing toys, and if reprimanded, usually wanders away with disinterest.
Normally, essences encourage better behavior within minutes or at most, after a few days of use. Severely damaged animals or chronic issues require more time but my experience is that permanent behavior improvement can be attained within one month. Flower essences go to the root cause of the problematic behavior thus permanently improving behavior.
Plain Crazy? Maybe Not
Cats not letting someone into the inner-circle looks petty and cruel to us but it can also be that the new animal is sick, possibly with a transmissible disease threatening the entire “family” and the meanies are, in reality, protecting everyone by shunning this cat. Maybe we will never know the cause for the aggressive, negative behaviors but that does not mean we can’t help them overcome their troubles and become contented, emotionally balanced individuals. If after giving flower essences a thorough try the animals still do not ‘accept and get along’, don’t push it – just accept this and remember that these animals’ innate intelligence has allowed them to survive upwards of 50 million years.
Blending essences of Sweet Pea for kindness, Gorse for hope, and Mustard for lingering depression has worked wonders on many animals suffering from insecure dominance resulting from poor breeding practices and lack of proper socialization as youngsters. We say this blend corrects insecurities and named it: CONFIDENCE. My experience is that flower essences will permanently improve behavior within one week of using a remedy. Then use if issues arise or you want to further improve behavior or advance training. In cases of mental damage from poor breeding practices and lack of proper socialization as youngsters, it could take longer to temper the personality. Perseverance is necessary since we are changing an ingrained mental pattern not merely a bad habit.
Even though I have been blending essences for 35 years, I still marvel at the powerful effectiveness and simplicity of it all. Here we are using plants in a form that is no fancier than a cup of tea but able to drastically improve lives. This time of year we can indulge our passion for flowers and create our own essences. Find your favorite (non-poisonous) flower, or weed in the case of Red Clover and Dandelion, place a few flower tops in a glass of water, set it in the sun for 20 minutes, and sip throughout the day. Not fancy. Simply powerful.
For more information:
BlackWing Farms – A Natural Approach to Behavior
HELPING HUMANS ONE ANIMAL AT A TIME
www.BlackWingFarms.com
Meg@BlackWingFarms.com
760-728-9900