🫣 The Scary Thing I Did (with my dog)
Hello!
Today I’m going to:
tell you about a scary thing I did
tell you about a book I recently loved
show you a cute pet picture! (wait, why make you wait? More below, too!)
Junebug says “I am petting-deficient. Probably dying of it.”
A Scary Thing I Did:
I took my dog back to doggie daycare. This is a big deal.
See, our little Junebug is reactive when on-leash. Her biggest trigger is a dog on the other side of a fence. She wants to GET IT — I can almost see the hot white static take over the space where her brain cells usually live.
Off-leash, she loves to play with other dogs but has no off button, so she’s been kindly uninvited back 😬 to the two other daycares we tried for her last year (dogs need a break from play, apparently, but Junebug begs to differ). She has one bestie who plays as hard as she does, but we only see her once a month or so. She needs more socialization.
I did not want to take her to a new doggie daycare. I thought it might undo all the training we’ve been doing. I thought she might get hurt. Even though this place was recommended by both our behaviorist and our trainer, I was scared.
Honestly, I was just plain terrified. Palms-sweaty, this-will-all-go-wrong wake-in-the-middle-of-the-night kind of scared.
But we’d been on a waiting list for this miracle place for almost a year, and we’d made this appointment to visit more than a month before. I’d almost canceled at least dozen times, certain Junebug wouldn’t be able to handle it. We’ve been working so hard on being outside just seeing other dogs (doing BAT 2.0 and LAT, for those in the know) and managing reactions.
Wouldn’t it better just to cancel in advance? Why get our hopes up? It would never work.
Our trainer said, “Go. Just try it.”
When we arrived at this new daycare, my anxiety was a box of bees in my chest.
Paul, the owner, was dressed in a wool tunic and voluminous, dirty linen pants, his long gray hair pulled back with braided cords. He was dressed to go straight from the Ren Faire to the nude beach. In his thick German accent, he called himself “a houndsman” and I thought, well! So this is what a houndsman looks like!
Surrounding him were fifty or so dogs (no exaggeration) and six other workers. Get this: all the dogs were silent. Not a single one barked. It would have been creepy if the dogs hadn’t been so obviously overjoyed to be there: romping, jumping over benches, racing through the spaces, and ecstatically flopping onto old couches.
Paul had me back our car into the breezeway. Then, in what I knew was a terible idea, he opened our hatchback where Junebug waited in her crate.
Facing Junebug were dozens of dogs, all interested in this new event. They were, might I add, all on the other side of a fence. Her biggest trigger, multiplied to hell and back.
“She’s going to lose it,” I said. “She can’t do this.”
What I meant was I’m going to lose it. I can’t do this.
Paul clipped a leash to her collar, and we followed him as he walked Junebug through his pack. She didn’t bark or lunge, but she was a tightly coiled comma of misery, moving with pinched steps.
I felt queasy. I was so anxious I couldn’t watch, sure that if Junebug saw me through the crowd, she’d pick up on my fear. So I turned my back and let strange dogs lick my hands as my wife Lala narrated for me. “She’s walking. Head down. Still walking. Oh, my god, her tail came up for a second. No, it’s back down again. Walking some more. Lots of dogs checking her out. She looks terrified.”
The other dogs wagged their tails and thumped around us, running through the covered barn area, out to the playground, and back again. (Still, none of them barked. I will never recover from that strange wonder.)
Lala went on, “Hey, she sniffed a dog! Okay, another one. Paul’s, oh wow, he’s taking off the leash. Now she’s running — no, she stopped. All right, whoa. Maybe you should look.”
I turned just as Junebug did a play-bow to the six or seven dogs currently facing her. Her front legs splayed wide to both sides, as if she was trying to bow to all of them at once.
Then I watched her unfurl. She became joy. By the end of our hour-long visit, she was flying through the crowd, pursuing and being pursued.
This was why we’d been on this waiting list for almost a year. Paul explained, “Would you go bring home a stranger every week and call them your family? Make them a bed and let them stay? What would that quickly do to your family happiness? Here we only add one at time, only when the pack is strong and happy, and only if they fit. I think your Junebug will fit.”
Yesterday was her first full day, and they sent us videos of her not only playing well with everyone, but also of her being chill. Resting like a normal dog. They said she was great. They said she was confident.
I can’t tell you how close I came to canceling our visit, just because I was too anxious. I’d been 100% certain Junebug couldn’t do it. I’d even made a plan with Lala on the way there, how if they sent us away in shame, we’d go get our favorite smoked chicken sandwiches to cheer ourselves up.
But I didn’t cancel. I just kept moving forward.
I ignored the fear. To use a cliche, I felt it and did it anyway. And today, my dog is so gorgeously exhausted and happy that my heart has been singing all day.
Necessary point: Fear is good sometimes! Fear keeps us driving in the correct lanes at safe speeds and prevents us from eating spoiled meat. But sometimes my anxiety is as hyperactive as the rest of me, and I just need to move ahead and do the thing.
And we got those delicious sandwiches on the way home to celebrate.
A Book I Just Read and Loved
Howl’s Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones
Of course, I love the Miyazaki movie — it’s my favorite of his movies. But somehow, I’d entirely missed that this wasn’t based on an old Japanese folk tale, but was a fairy tale by a British writer, Diana Wynne Jones, released in 1986. I listened to it as I cross-stitched (yep, I’m THAT cool — let’s not even discuss the fact that I’m cross-stitching dragons) and oh, the book was so lovely and delicious. Every single chapter brought me deeper into that delightful world, which was similar to but very different from the movie. A girl, cursed to be an old woman, bossing around a young, handsome, ridiculous, grumpy wizard — glorious. (The audiobook is charming in every way.)
That Pet Picture I Promised
We used to always keep a menagerie, in the old days when we lived in the US. But pets are expensive, y’all, so we only have the one now! (A kitten will be coming at some point.) But the only child we have is CUTE.
Here is her OH GOD TOO EXCITED face when we visited the daycare last week:
And if you click HERE, you can see her in action in a short vid on Insta (and see how many dogs she is just hanging out with!)
A Request for Pet Pictures!
As we only have the one, I’d love to see your cat/dog/bunny/bird/snake/rat/turtle (I draw the line at spiders but thank you for offering).
Thanks for being here. I’m really glad you are.
love,
Rachael
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PS - 🎉🎉🎉 THANK YOU to all of you who have already bought, read, and loved my new memoir Unstuck! I’m so happy you’re liking it! It’ll soon be available everywhere, but in the meantime, I’m sticking it to the (Amazon) man by selling it first direct on my website (and you can read it on any device you like, including your Kindle, or get it in paperback, or audiobook), so hop over to check it out! ❤️ The book is about Doing the Scariest Things. You might like it.
PPS - Speaking of liking things, if you liked this letter, will you forward it to someone who might feel the same way? They might like to subscribe, too! They can do that right here, by hitting this blue button ⬇️
PPPS - What’s the last thing you did that scared you? I’d honestly love to know. (I do take a while to respond back — sometimes a very long while — but I always respond eventually!)