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Maybe you know already that I like walking with my dogs. Sometimes I wonder: Who doesn’t? But then I think of the millions of dogs that live their lives behind closed doors, gates and fences. For me to walk with my dogs in the beautiful valleys of the Spanish hills is god’s gift. Having done it for many years I discovered that the best walk is for me the walk in complete silence.

What happens during a walk in complete silence is that my dogs are paying attention to me. Preferably I have them in front of me because that allows me to check where they are and what they do. But if one of them stays behind I walk on without saying anything. Of course, I can only do that when I am walking in areas where there is no traffic at all.

During the walk my dogs are paying attention to me and I am paying attention to them simply by looking at each other. They know when I stand still, go left, go right , walk on or walk back. This way of walking is a clear copy of what a pack of canines do on their walks, which are course not ‘walks’ but hunting expeditions. Do you think the members of a pack of wolves are chattering away when they are chasing a deer? The answer is obvious.

As my dogs are my teachers, my walking experience with them gave me an idea for a Sunday morning walk with the members of the local chapter of the University of the Third Age. Before we start I welcome the newcomers and repeat that each member of the group is responsible for her/his dog. Meaning that whenever there is the need {car, cyclists, joggers, etc…} each member of the group calls her/his dog to come close and wait for the release signal.

This time I added something. I asked the group for help with an experiment. My suggestion was that we would walk as a group without uttering a word during five minutes. Off we went. Most of the members stayed quiet but a few could not even keep their mouths shut for that short period.

After five minutes I stopped the group, jumped on a rock and commented on what we had done. According to me we never before had, as a group of human beings, been as close to our dogs as today. During these five minutes we had really been hunting like a natural pack that communicates through body language.

The most exhilarating part of my experience was that a few members had also noticed something. They had noticed that their dogs were paying more attention to them. That was great. For once we had not walked as a noisy, chattering group that is not paying attention to anything else but the sound of their voices.

You can call a silent walk with your dogs a spiritual experience, as it not only allows us to fully enjoy the natural environment, but also to listen to our own soul. A noisy, chattering group on the other hand is a perfect reflection of our society.

In our society we are being bombarded with sounds and images. If you are 65 years old today, you have on average been sitting in front of a TV-screen during 15 years. If you are 18 years old today, you have on average been bombarded by 250.000 different TV-commercials. Is that brain-washing, yes or no?

In addition to TV, there are the noise and the images of the movies, the computer, the computer games, the mobile phones, the car radios and the walkman earpieces. We fill our minds with so many images and so much noise that we cannot listen to our souls anymore. No wonder there are millions of children suffering from what is called ADD or Attention Deficit Disorder.

Animals do not live like that. They do not know what ADD is. Neither do our dogs know what that is. They still know what it is to communicate in silence. When one of my dogs starts sniffing in a more intense way, the others come close because they know she has picked up a special scent. When one of them sprints away fast, the others know she has seen a rabbit and follow her.

Somewhere I have read the following:

Silence is the language of the universe. Everything else is a bad translation.

Isn’t that beautiful?

Just give it a try. If you have a dog, next time you walk with your pet, go to a quiet area and walk with her/him without saying anything. If you do not have a dog go for a silent walk on your own or with a friend. Listen to your own soul, listen to her/his soul and listen to the voice of the universe.

See what happens and then send me a message about it.

Good luck with your silent walk.

Kindest regards from Bruno Goffin

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