One of the first signs that Ceili had more serious fear and anxiety issues than the usual ‘settling in’ to a new home nervousness came on one of our early morning walks. As we walked along a quiet path towards some woodland, we spotted a neighbor and his two dogs, maybe 20 or 30 feet ahead of us.
Ceili froze. She couldn’t go forward and she couldn’t go back. She was stuck – totally paralyzed by her fear of these dogs. While our neighbor’s dogs are big, they are also the epitome of laidback calm. They had absolutely zero interest in Ceili.
It took some time, a lot of encouragement and a certain amount of understanding on my neighbor’s part to eventually get Ceili moving again.
I hadn’t thought about this incident in months. I probably wouldn’t have except that yesterday we spotted the same dogs at about the same distance away. Only this time, Ceili walked happily past them, pausing only to allow me to offer a cheery ‘good morning’ and reward Ceili with a ‘cookie’.
It was the latest in a series of small victories in our work on Ceili’s fear and anxiety issues. It seems so insignificant but these small victories are huge steps forward – signs of a more confident and happier dog emerging from whatever demons from her past haunted her when we brought her home.
Living with someone else’s fear and anxiety inevitably makes you think about your own, particularly when that someone else is a dog. Once you know what you’re looking for, most dogs are very honest about their feelings. There’s no embarrassment or social pressure to be brave or ‘man up’. There’s no pretending. You can literally see their fear holding them back or pushing them into certain reactions. They don’t make excuses. There’s no ‘sorry, I can’t try that new thing because I’m washing my hair’.
No, if you want to be called out on how you deal with your fear and anxiety, live with a dog like Ceili. When you live each day with a dog whose life is dictated by her fear, you start to wonder what your own fear and anxieties are stopping you from doing.
Mine sometimes stop me from going to meet new people, that old expat fear of walking into a room of total strangers and not connecting with anyone. My fears sometimes stop me from trying new things – I could have been paddle boarding all summer if only I’d been brave enough to try it sooner. My fears stop me from moving outside my comfort zone. I worry about things that I can’t change and that haven’t happened yet, like the next move and whether we will ever find a landlord willing to take on us and the dogs and in worrying about the future, I lose sight of how great the here and now really is. I don’t put myself forward for new opportunities because I’m scared I won’t be good enough.
If Ceili has made me think about my own fears, she’s also taught me what it looks like to be free of them. Earlier this year, we visited our friends at J-Canine for a photo shoot which was taking place in their awesome private dog park. While Ceili behaved well enough for the shoot, the really camera worthy moment came afterwards. With time to spare before the next ‘models’ arrived, we let Ceili off leash in the park.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen as vivid an expression of joy as I saw that morning – she ran, she rolled, she threw herself into the water and swam. If dogs could laugh out loud with sheer pleasure, she would have laughed. She tore up the park as we watched, speechless. It was pure, unadulterated, full volume, out loud joy.
In her small victories over fear and anxiety, Ceili has shown me not just that I too can be a prisoner to my own inner demons but also what a life with less fear looks like – it’s joyous and free. It’s living in the moment. It’s forward motion, past those things that otherwise hold me back.
I’d love to say that I’m just going to brush all my fears aside and live a more joyful life right this minute. Just like Ceili, I need to take some baby steps and achieve some small victories. But I’m going to try to be more like my dog and move past them, to let a bit more joy in.
PS. Sometimes the universe conspires to really bring a message home to you. I was drafting this post yesterday morning but took a break to go to yoga where my favorite teacher told the class that her theme for the Halloween period was fear and moving past it. Because, to quote Jamie: ‘Sometimes everything you want and sometimes even things that you need are just on the other side of your fear.’
Thank you Sarah! It makes my heart happy when my students take something from my class that speaks to them.