The Petitation Companion: Meditation...Easy & Fun with Your Pet

The Petitation Companion looks like just a guidebook to accompany a series of meditation exercises that are available for download on www.mindfulpetitations.org by looking at the Review of the Petitation Practices page for instructions once you buy the book. But it is more than a guidebook. I'm Elisabeth Paige and wrote the book with my mother Joanne and Pago, the geeky, scientifically minded Schipperke, who convinces us that he is really the author. He entertains and amuses as he teaches the practice of meditation and makes it easy for even the most skeptical of us to join him in his meditation practice. This is the first time I incorporated fictionalized characters in a publication. For 20 years I had been a medical researcher, working with millions of dollars in grants, publishing papers on public health issues, in addition to a full length book. Through it all, my mother was my editor. Recently while working in service dog research, we fell into this one, using our relationships with our dogs to enhance our meditation practice. Pago doesn't have to work too hard to convince us that he's the boss. He narrates the story, beginning with his feelings about the whole thing: Mom harrumphed at me, "Leave me alone. All I'm asking for is 20 minutes so I can meditate. Is that too much to ask?" Mom went into her room and slammed the door in my face. Wow, what had I done to deserve that attitude? I'm Pago, a good dog, a sweet, well-behaved, shiny black Schipperke. Everyone loves me, especially Mom. I had been listening to her complaining that she was supposed to participate in this meditation stuff to help her, but that it wasn't working. I wasn't about to let her continue to be miserable, so I barked and carried on and scratched at her door until she finally let me in. She threw herself back on the bed and looked really awful, eyes squeezed shut, body tense, jaw and face tight. "Tell me something, is meditation really supposed to help?" I jumped into her lap and licked her face, listening to her complain. "I've been trying to meditate. My doctor says I should quiet my mind and try to focus my attention on my breath. It's so frustrating--my mind is all over the place. First it's on the mountain of laundry in the bedroom, next it's what to cook for dinner and the shopping I still have to do. I just can't focus on my breath." Then she started treating me like she usually did, petting me gently on my belly, until we both were so relaxed and contented that we almost fell asleep. Ten minutes later, a timer went off. I could see that she was finally overwhelmed with joy and relaxed, feeling contented the way meditators were supposed to be. She exclaimed to no one in particular, "I just meditated for ten whole minutes. It was so much easier to pay attention to your fur than to focus on my breath. I never realized how soft you are." She started to question me and the thoughts began to pour out of her (You have to know Mom to understand what I mean-she thinks really fast and talks even faster.), "Could the other meditations I've been trying to do be easier if I focused on you? The gratitude meditation is supposed to be one of the most important practices. It's so hard to come up with something that I'm extremely grateful for every single time, but, I'm always grateful for you. And, it's particularly important to stay in the moment with you without technology when I take you for a walk. The equanimity or balance meditation is critical when dealing with acceptance. Grief is so hard to deal with when I've lost one of my pets. I wonder what I could do to make it easier. See what I mean? Pretty soon she had the whole thing figured out. "Pago, I think we're onto something! Meditating with your pet ...Let me think about it. What if we called them Petitations?" And that's how Petitations began. I just had to write the book.