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mararupners

Something strange happened a week or two ago. Ogle and I had just had a nice easy walk along the Hudson. The trail we were on isn’t as popular as some others in the area, and it was early enough on Sunday morning that we hardly saw anyone. It was peaceful, just the woods, the river, birdsongs, pretty views. Our kind of walk. Heading home there is a steep-ish short cut back up to the road to the parking lot. I always have her stop and sit at the top, partly because I am an amazing and highly responsible dog owner and want to make sure I can see who or what is on the road before we proceed, partly because I desperately need to catch my breath. So we did that, and when I was ready to move again I gave her a “let’s go,” looked down at her and – holy shit – her slip collar was just hanging by the end of the leash, no dog attached. And she’s still just sitting there, sniffing the world.

Of course I panicked. I grabbed her other collar, the normal one with her tags, said “stay stay stay stay stay stay” a totally unnecessary number of times, and tried to figure out what the hell had just happened. The collar was open, so it hadn’t slipped over her head. The hook on the collar was intact, and closed. There was no visible damage, nothing missing, nothing loose. What the actual fuck?

So, with hands shaking a bit, I put the slip collar back on and walked back to the car, mentally flipping out the whole way. I was completely convinced there would be a deer, or another dog, or whatever, and she would lunge and the collar would come off again.

It didn’t. And we’ve walked at least 50 times since then, and it hasn’t. And, most likely, it won’t.

But I can’t stop thinking about it. The thing is, I have anxiety. With anxiety comes a tendency to catastrophize and obsess about all the zillions of things that can go wrong at any given moment. Like, for example, a dog with a bite history who is my responsibility somehow getting loose and hurting someone.

Is this a realistic fear? I don’t know. While on the one hand I know we have taken a lot of steps in the right direction and have made a whole bunch of progress, we still make mistakes, and unexpected things can happen. The leash comes loose, the collar slips off, the gate isn’t latched, the neighbor’s kid runs into the yard. Those what-ifs still really haunt me. How do you ever know, really, what your dog will do in any given situation? Especially when something bad has actually already happened. I’ve had to do a lot of mental gymnastics to be able to convince myself get out on walks since the Mysterious Incident of the Open Collar. But, so far, so good.

We’re quite a team, Ogie and me. A dog that struggles with fear-based reactivity and aggression being led around by a woman who struggles with a brain that expects the worst at all times. It is not easy. But I guess you could say we are working through it all together.

Our Story

Some days are just ordinary days, and some days are the kinds of days on which, without warning, everything tilts.

Friday, January 6, 2023 was one of those kinds of days.

I was working from home. My husband Aini took our two-year old dog Ogle to the dog park. It’s their thing. She gets a bunch of exercise and he gets to chit chat with his dog peeps.

They were gone for a long time. And when he got home, he came into my office. Pale. Shaky. He sat down. And proceeded to tell me that Ogle had chased down and brutally attacked another dog. There were multiple deep bites; the other dog was taken to the emergency vet. Ogle didn’t have a scratch.

The next few days were a blur of tears and severe anxiety and text message exchanges with the other owner. The other dog recovered. We drained our savings and borrowed money to pay the vet bills.

We looked at our dog with new eyes. We looked at ourselves with new eyes. What the hell had just happened? And what the hell do we do now?

True confession. After much soul-searching and research, we did try to rehome her. We had visions of her living with more competent owners, on a couple of acres of land, with fewer stressors. A place where she could be who she is. But…an adult dog with a bite history. Who would want to take her? Turns out, nobody.

So here she still is. And here we still are. And this blog is a reflection on our continued journey with this intense, wonderful, complicated, smart, anxious, beautiful and incredibly challenging dog.