Kate LSY

How it Started

Coming home from a 6-week vacation overseas in April, ecstatic and newly engaged, I felt ready to fulfill a childhood dream while pushing my partner and I’s journey to the next level. In May, we adopted a female 7-months Red Merle Australian Shepherd from a middle-aged couple looking to rehome her because:

1. The puppy energy was getting to be too much now that she’s full grown at 45 pounds
2. Their older dog disliked the new puppy
3. They also have an elderly parent at home, and the puppy was getting too big and too jumpy
4. The puppy was their daughter’s dog, but all the caretaking work has fallen onto the parents, and she will be off to college next year

Armed with all the information above, which gave me no particular reason to believe there would be issues other than “a puppy being a puppy”, we were ready to give this cutie patootie a loving home. We were determined to dedicate time for training and taking her to classes, and I looked forward to all the new experiences and wonderful memories because I’ll be bringing her everywhere I go. Or so I thought.

I picked out the name Sunny when I saw the puppy’s photos; her coat reminded me of a lazy summer afternoon when the cicadas were singing and the sun was shining just right. She would be a ray of sunshine, my ray of sunshine. I was so sure of that. The night before picking her up, I couldn’t help but think this was fate doing its magic. This was going to be a dot that I can connect fondly when looking backward because I do love to reminisce.

Well, you saw the title of this post, so you can envision how things unfolded. But we’re not there yet! We’re still at the “Omg! I’m so excited! I can’t believe I’m finally getting a dog!” stage.

On Mother’s Day weekend, we drove two hours and arrived at the couple’s driveway. The double-door garage clicked and slowly lifted. Knowing what I know now, I see clearly the red flags that I missed because I was a) too excited, and b) didn’t know any better.

Sunny barked, almost manically, in a crate that was a size too small. Her food and water bowl, along with a pee pad, lay on the opposite end of the garage. She jumped on us and her owners when the crate opened and continued to bark around us in a circular motion. In our excitement, we asked to take her out for a walk. It went as well as you can imagine — The concept of “loose leash walking” didn’t exist in our minds then; it certainly didn’t exist in Sunny’s either.

It was easy to sweep everything under the rug with excitement in the air. Everything is totally fine. Right? We knew we had to train her, she’s not going to be the perfect dog right out of the package. And so, we loaded Sunny and her tiny crate onto our car, and off we went to our “happily ever after.”

With the sudden changes of becoming a dog owner, along with Sunny’s reactivity, I was barely hanging on by a thread. I thought of what others might think of me as I walked Sunny sometimes; I constantly worried we might be reported to animal control because of how aggressive she appeared. My neighbours may appear tolerant, but for how long?

Looking back, it was clear Sunny had little socialization and zero to no training. In the first two months, she pottied in the house when she was scared, and she was always afraid. She barked incessantly at the slightest noise outside or at anyone who walked too close to our property. By the third week, she stopped walking. We’d make it 50 meters before her tail is tucked between her legs and she’d lay down and refuse to walk. If there is slack on the leash, she will bolt in the direction of home. I coaxed, acted excited, and patiently waited. Nothing worked. I wanted a dog that I can take anywhere, instead, I got a fur bundle of anxiety and reactivity that wanted to be nowhere but home. How was I supposed to keep an Australian Shepherd from destroying the house when I couldn’t take her outside?

It was a hard pill to swallow that this was my life now. I couldn’t go on walks and I’d need to hide from everything in sight or she’d go berserk. I traded my previously harmonious life to helicoptering over my canine companion. I wanted a dog that is everything Sunny isn’t. I loathed her timidness and fearfulness, and her inability to regulate her emotions. Doesn’t she know that we all have things we’re afraid of but we put on a brave face anyway? Oh, I forgot, she’s a dog, and I have some unresolved issues.

If you can’t already tell, I’m not the easygoing type of person. I would like to think of myself as one, but I’m not. I’m high-strung, I take things often too seriously and tend to make problems bigger than they appear. In other words, I’m a professional ruminator who bathes in an echo chamber resulting in debilitating spirals and way too many breakdowns.

And so, for the first 2.5 months, I did what I do best and dwelled on all of Sunny’s problems. I had one meltdown after another; an embarrassing amount of ugly crying for a grown woman.

I wondered if dog ownership was for me, even if Sunny was “normal”. I had a sinking feeling that if I knew what I knew, I wouldn’t have had a dog.

I wasn’t bonding with her.

I was not only disenchanted with dogs, but that disenchantment expanded to all animals.

How could I have been so naive?

Would I ever get my life back? What would it take, and what does it say about me that I’m constantly considering doing what it takes to get my life back?

Was I a bad person all along and I just didn’t know?

Why is it that other people can do it, and I can’t?

How is it that everyone on the reactivity subreddit wouldn’t trade their dog for the world despite it all, and I’d trade her in a heartbeat?

Sunny made me question the very being of me, and whether I knew how to love something unconditionally. Worst yet, she unveiled the truth that if I ever became a mother, I’d be a stern and withholding one with unrealistic high expectations that ultimately crushed my child. The exact opposite of who I thought I was, and the exact opposite of who I wanted to be.

All of a sudden, it was hard to live with the dog of my nightmares and myself at the same time.

I lost 15 pounds too. I’m not complaining about that though. But boy oh boy, did the puppy blues hit me bad.

How It’s Going

I haven’t ugly cried for 4 weeks now, and I haven’t thought about rehoming Sunny either, at least not in a serious way. My life is returning to a new normal where I resumed working out and writing — things I previously thought I’d have no chance of returning to because my life was obviously ruined.

Things are going well. I’m sleeping and eating again, and I’m slowly gaining back the 15 pounds I lost during the puppy blues. I feel joy again, which is a big one because there was just something about that first 2.5 months where the weight of everything felt like I wasn’t ever going to be happy again. A bond is beginning to build between Sunny and me. There is a level of shared understanding that allows us to move with more synchronization. Also, something that I didn’t think would happen.

Sunny’s getting the hang of loose leash walking. We’ve taken her on hikes where she walked in a manner that exceeded expectations. We do a much better job at managing her environment and her exposure to triggers. Her tolerance increased, and she can recover focus sooner after an incident. Don’t get me wrong, she is still very much reactive. On a good morning walk, she will engage and make good decisions to ignore triggers with a vastly improved distance. However, on an afternoon walk, she’ll get too scared to make it down the block; any sight of a trigger will set her off. This is where we head back home, even if it means we only walk for 50 meters.

I don’t want to romanticize her reactivity progress. Yes, she is a different dog from 3 months ago, but it will likely be a lifetime of management because that’s who she is, and we’ll likely continue to get dirty looks from pedestrians or strangers taunting Sunny when she’s in full blown panic mode. But that’s okay, my skin is hella thick now.

So what changed?

It’s hard to have faith when you’re in the thick of it, but the 3/3/3 rule is real, y’all. The settling period was essential to not just dogs, but for people too. It felt like a switch flipped after the 2.5-month mark. The closer the 3-month mark, the more things clicked. Granted, there were a lot of horrible experiences paired with tons and tons of research and learning that led to things clicking. But at the same time, I felt like the three months was also a sufficient time to mourn the loss of the dog I wanted and didn’t get.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt so envious and jealous of other people’s dogs that roam the street confidently and are friendly to adults, children, and pets. Three months of simmering in anger, disappointment, frustration, and despair, and now it’s like water off a duck’s back. I needed to work through all of that emotion before I could truly “work with the dog that’s in front of me”. If you’re also going through this phase, may I suggest giving yourself time to grieve and process all those doubts and negative emotions without giving yourself a hard time? Stop giving yourself lectures on morality or beat yourself up for having negative emotions. It’s okay to have those emotions and take time to work through them. We all have bad thoughts. It’s not the thoughts that define us, but what we do after having those thoughts that counts.

We hired a trainer by month 2, and we’ve only had 2 lessons so far. The relief and reassurance I felt in the first lesson brought me to tears. I cried every time I saw the trainer, she’s my new therapist, and she didn’t even charge me extra (lol).

Aside from Sunny settling in and feeling more comfortable in her surroundings, the biggest difference was a change of mentality on my part. Once my wall of emotions broke down, I can finally think straight and reflect on things that were within my control; the biggest one being I decided to be fun.

I went from a withholding parent whose expectations were never met to becoming Sunny’s most enthusiastic cheerleader. When she does something right, it’s no longer a monotone “yes” with a treat and a hint of “you can do better”; rinse and repeat till she’s bored or frustrated. Now, it’s a full-blown dance party with a full-body rubdown for Sunny. We end the session on that high note, leaving her wanting more.

When she becomes stiff and alert watching a trigger far in the distance, I give her time to make the right decision and look back at me. If she doesn’t that’s okay, but if she does, I celebrate with her as we’ve just won the $70million jackpot. Do I feel silly? Yes. Does it take a lot of energy? Yes. Do strangers look at me like I’m crazy? Probably, but who cares? It made all the difference in how Sunny acted and responded to me, and it began a positive feedback loop. I always knew you can catch more bees with honey, but I was too egotistic to change my ways; expecting Sunny to seek my approval when I wanted something from her. Now, I try to make myself desirable in her eyes by being energetic and fun.

The second biggest thing that helped was managing the environment and understanding Sunny’s threshold to triggers. Allowing her to move at a pace she is comfortable with and not the pace I think she should be moving. This helped improve our relationship and showed her she can start to trust me because I have her back. Consequently, some of my favourite walking days are when it rains because I can put on a long raincoat and roam the streets freely along with Sunny with no humans or dogs in sight.

Sunny taught me so much about everything in the past three months that I feel like a completely different person. I built resilience that I didn’t know I needed. I feel like I’ve levelled up as a human being or completed a character development arch or something (lol). I’ve always been a personal development buff, and while I’ve started to appreciate the little things, I needed a dog like Sunny to teach me to love the rainy days too. As cheesy as it sounds, maybe there is some truth in “we don’t get the dog we want, we get the dog we need.” At least, that’s the Kool-Aid I’m chugging down my throat currently. Perhaps, after all, that faithful May weekend will be a dot I can fondly connect on when looking back.

It’s not a Sunny happily ever after yet; but a work in progress.

Thanks for reading, may you fall asleep as unbothered as Sunny 🙂
Kate LSY