A year ago we signed the adoption papers on a dog who has changed our lives in ways we never expected.
The journey to her adoption wasn’t straightforward. To be honest, it was fraught with doubts, fierce debate and the devastating loss of another dog last summer, a dog who despite being in our home for only a short while had become part of the family.
And then along came Ceili.
We’re still not sure how it really all happened. I’d met her as a volunteer dog walker but there had been no instant connection. She didn’t make a really strong impression on me. She was so overwhelmed by life at the shelter that she just lay in her kennel – my walking partner would go in and just sit with her to try to lift her spirits.
But one Saturday morning, Himself went to look at the dogs without me. And Ceili pretty much choose him. She ran right up to him and leaned against his leg. By Sunday night, we’d committed to bringing her home for a trial.
We quickly learned was that Ceili was a bundle of fear, anxiety and tension. If she saw another dog on our morning walk, she would have what we can only describe as a panic attack. We can offer no explanation for her almost immediate bond with Freya other than perhaps some things are meant to be.
Loud noises, new people, bicycles, joggers, the doorbell, Himself’s shoes, raised voices – all left her literally paralyzed with fear. She would freeze on our morning walk if something frightened her – and most things did. She would cower and run away from Himself’s work shoes. If he raised his hands, she would flee the room.
She didn’t like to be petted. She would sit five feet away from me when I put her dinner down and she wouldn’t eat until I left the room.
It took us 30 minutes to get her to come upstairs on her first night and for weeks she ignored her luxurious dog bed for a corner on the bathroom floor.
And yet we fell in love with her.
Over the last year, Ceili has taken us on the most extraordinary adventure. I often say she is one of the best teachers I have ever had. I have already learned so much from this journey that we are all on together.
She has taught me about overcoming fear. It took us a long time but today we mostly breeze past bicycles and greet early morning joggers on our walk. It turns out sometimes we just need to change our perception of the scary things in life and look at them differently. I often wish I had half Ceili’s courage and that my I could learn to transform my own fears.
In tackling her fears and trying new things, Ceili has shown herself capable of enormous growth and change. She’s a constant reminder to me to push myself to just try something new and to believe that I can change too. If she can be a different dog after everything she has been through, then other dogs and other people must also have the capacity to change.
And life with Ceili has reaffirmed the importance of patience, something I’ve not always been known for. She’s taught me in the last year that sometimes you have to celebrate the baby steps, the little moves forward and accept that some days, there might be a step backwards.
Ceili is also a constant reminder of my own limitations. In fact, I often say that I am her biggest limitation on her journey to becoming a happy, social dog. If I don’t do the work, she doesn’t get to progress. No short cuts, no magic fixes, no miracle cures. And sometimes I let her down.
She also reminds me that I need to be careful about the limitations I place on others. Ceili has constantly surprised us in the last year. She has often exceeded my expectations of her – she breezed through a visit to a friend’s home for lunch, going so far as to hop up on the couch for a cuddle. She runs to the door when a friend who we refer to as her ‘fairy dogmother’ comes to visit and offers her cuddles and kisses. She coped with an off leash dog running up to her with a very ‘appropriate’ canine version of ‘go away now’!
It hasn’t been easy. She is still a work in progress. We would never have made it this far without the support and help of her trainer and ‘therapist’ and her colleagues; without friends willing to work around her issues when they visit us.
But today we are ambitious about the future – she’s making me a better dog owner and truth be told, a better person.
She may be crazy but she’s absolutely worth it.
PS. Ceili is an Irish word, pronounced Kay-Lee. Its traditional Irish music and also what we call a party where such music, dancing and storytelling takes place. We read recently that it is derived from an older Irish word for ‘companion’.