Meet the Doggos of @humandesignfordoggos | Meet Misha 🐾

I adopted Misha in January of 2020 when he was about 6 months old. Here’s his story:

I initially went to the shelter to meet a different dog. I knew I was about ready to adopt my first dog, and I had signed up for daily emails from Petfinder. In my inbox that morning was a picture of a little beagle mix named Blue and I just felt this incredibly strong sacral pull to go to the shelter to meet him.

Blue. What a sweet face!

I get to Pima Animal Care Center, and Blue’s kennel was in the Puppy Room, which was super easy to locate. But when I met him face to face, that insanely strong sacral pull VANISHED, which was super confusing & disappointing. I thought it might be because he was recovering from surgery, but I quickly realized that he was struggling with mobility issues. I lived in a second-floor walk-up with laminate floors, and I felt like those conditions wouldn’t be the best fit for him. So Blue wasn’t meant to be my doggo.

Regardless, I felt like I was there in that room for a reason, decided to trust my sacral YES, and began to walk around to visit with the other animals housed there…and IN THE KENNEL DIRECTLY BEHIND BLUE WAS MY MISHA!

This was the first glimpse I had of my sweet boy. He’s named after the insanely talented ballet dancer/choreographer Mikhail Baryshnikov, whose nickname is Misha. Look at my graceful little man LOL

Misha was on a “stray hold” so he hadn’t hit the shelter’s website yet. Unfortunately, his first family was struggling with housing insecurity. When they were able to secure consistent housing, there was a "no pet" policy in place, so they made the difficult choice to surrender him to our local shelter.

My timing was PERFECT. I met him the day before his "hold" expired, felt that instant POWERFUL SACRAL YES and strong connection (he woke up and we interacted through the glass until the shelter was about to close), and I was first in line at the shelter the next morning to meet him & formalize the adoption. Because his vaccines weren’t complete, I had to wear a gown, booties, and gloves, but I swear he remembered me from my visit the previous day and launched himself into my lap and covered me with kisses the moment I entered his kennel. It was love at first sight/sniff, and the rest is history :)

Chart via Genetic Matrix

Luckily, because Misha was an owner surrender and still a puppy, I had a really narrow window of birthdates to choose from. That said, I waited until he was about a year and a half old to get out the ephemeris and attempt to nail down a birthdate because I wanted to get a true sense of his personality first. I knew he was most likely born in early to mid-July, which made him a Cancer, and I was able to narrow down the birth date by process of elimination by looking at where the moon was during that window, and settled on July 22nd, 2019, which makes him a Cancer Sun & Pisces Moon, and it fits him to a T (my guy has a LOT of FEELINGS that he will freely share with you LOL).

His Mammalian Design chart is also SPOT ON. Misha is a Reflector, which is a super common type in canine charts and understanding that Misha has a sampling aura has been paradigm-shifting in our house.

Here’s an example: When we go on walks, Misha needs to sniff EVERYTHING, way more than his two fur brothers. At first, this could be a bit frustrating, especially as I walk him on a tandem leash with his fur brother, Murphy. But now that I know that he's designed to need to take in his environment in order to feel safe, I've intentionally built more time into our walks for Misha to explore our neighborhood. And because Murphy has a defined spleen center, he’s totally cool with letting Misha explore and even pick which way we go…as long as Murphy gets to cosplay Secret Service Agent (more about that in another post).

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be introducing you to all three of my doggos and teaching you a bit about Mammalian Design using their charts. Drop your questions in the comments section!!!