An unexpected ‘leg’ of my homeless journey is turning out to be dogsitting. Who would have thought that dogs could give rise to dāna that could support homelessness?
I had the idea in mid-July, when reality of ‘high-class homelessness’ relying heavily on AirBnBs started hitting home. It’s true that without a home, a lot of expenditures disappear . There’s no council tax, no utility bills, no home insurance, etc. But those savings quickly evaporate paying for shelter night-by-night.
Then it occurred to me, ‘I love dogs, and people need people to look after their dogs, and I’ve done it plenty of times for friends.’
After some research, I joined TrustedHousesitters, essentially a dāna-based model that provides a real win-win-win. I get a free place to stay, the hosts get a free dogsitter, and the dog gets to stay at home instead of going to kennels. No money is exchanged at all, apart from a reasonable yearly fee to the website.
This modern form of dāna was already familiar to me. When I first got my dog, Nunuk, my neighbors fell in love with him and asked if we could share him. I said ‘yes’, and it worked wonderfully well. After a while, I offered to pay them for watching him. The woman was very decisiveness. ‘No’, she replied, ‘that would change our relationship with him. We want it to stay as the beautiful relationship it is.’
She was wise. Money changes things. Exchanging money invites what Ayya Khema called the ‘marketplace mentality’. Instinctively, you start looking to see if things are fair, value for money, wondering if you could have saved a little more somehow. Goodwill can easily recede into the background.
But when money is taken out of the equation, things more easily flow to and from the heart. It becomes a lovely exchange of true good will, trust, care, and gratitude. I’m grateful for the shelter and a dog who makes sure I walk every day (my ‘personal trainer’); the hosts are grateful that someone is looking after their dog, plants, and home. In this ecosystem of dāna, kindness arises quite naturally — the big pot of homemade chili left in the fridge, friends of the hosts arriving unexpectedly with two guitars for me to play.
Dog-sitting is giving me some breathing space to contemplate how to use this precious space opened up in my life. Yes, I’ve gone the homeless route and am glad to have done so. But it is clearly an art, and an art that I’m still learning. There’s a sense of floundering in it, not doing it very well. Yet.
10 October 2024 — Helensburgh, Scotland
Stops since the last entry: Queensferry → Corbridge → Dunfermline → Helensburgh