HEEL

A repeated aphorism I hear from our dog trainer and other dog owners alike is “you don’t get the dog you want, you get the dog you need.” In being told this, I wonder quietly why the hell I still need so many life lessons. Life has given me a lot of “project” dogs, an ambiguous term used in place of badly behaved. My current dog, Saucer, is no exception.

I fall hard for these project dogs. I pour myself into them. They become “good” dogs. Eventually. They have so much love and potential, but with my torn sleeve still between her teeth, arm bleeding, and both our hearts racing, it’s hard to push through to eventually. I feel broken as much as we feel break throughs.

She’s the only dog I have considered rehoming. I am just not sure she’d be alive if I did. And so we continue - content in little wins and accepting the setbacks. She needs a different type of guardian so I adapt. I see a lot of myself in her - I feel for my parents. A fiercely independent, strong willed, and emotional being, she is not easy, but she is loving, intelligent, complex, clever, and funny. And on sunny days, we sit quietly in the yard hip to hip while we both decompress and heal.

A few experiments from Saucer and I from this lifelong project.