One of my first memories is being excited for show and tell in Kindergarten. When my turn came around I brought in a stack of photos. The teacher shows the pictures to the class as I stood up front beside her.
Until she got to some photos and said, “Oh, let’s not show these.” She put them at the back of the stack and moved on.
The pictures were of my lacerated back after being attacked by two Dobermans. I don’t recall the event, but I was playing with Tonka Trucks in the park across the street from my house.
On a physical level, I have always had a clenched gut, fear response to dogs, especially Dobermans. Seeing one or hearing its bark or going by a house where there is one elicits this response. Even a statue of a Doberman on a neighbors front porch brings up the response and it takes me a while to talk myself out of it.
Now I am in my 40’s, with kids, and my oldest daughter shares my fear. My younger daughter is the complete opposite.
She has never seen a dog she didn’t like. As a toddler, she would go up to any dog, shove her hands in its face, and cackle with glee when it licked her. All the dogs in our neighborhood she knows on a first-name basis.
Around Preschool, she got the idea of asking for a dog. She was relentless. Every day it was a barrage of questions.
“Can we get a dog?”
“Is today the day we get a dog?”
“When will we get a dog?”
After a couple of years, it became clear that she wasn’t going to let up. We started to do research and entertain the idea of getting a dog.
My older daughter became adamant that she was going to have no part of this. She vowed to lock herself in her room if we got a dog.
She didn’t fully come around until we went to a foster home full of puppies. She sat by herself, on the floor over by the wall to avoid the chaos of 30 puppies in a house, which was pretty gross.
A timid, tiny brown puppy was off by itself, under a table, and it ran over to her and curled up in her lap. She instantly fell in love.
Seeing this dog befriend, my daughter was so touching. On an intuitive level they connected. Being scared of dogs my whole life, I didn’t know something like this was possible. We didn’t pick out a dog; a dog picked us.
We went and picked up the dog a couple of weeks later when it was old enough to bring home. We got a trainer who helped us establish the training rules.
It took me a while to connect with the dog. After all, it was the kid’s dog, not mine. It was my job to maintain order and the dog’s job to follow my orders.
Things started to change because the dog was always trying to befriend me. She comes and sits right by me and tilts her head back, looking at me and longingly requests a scratch. When I move on to other things she prods me with her snout and asks for another scratch.
She wants me to be present with her and not distracted by other things like my phone or a book.
One thing I learned is that a dog can only ever be fully present and in the moment. The dog doesn’t hold it against me that I forgot to take her for a walk yesterday. She is not worried that I will probably forget to feed her again tonight.
She is teaching me how to be present in life. When I notice myself being distracted, I am more able to come back to what I need to be focusing on.
Over time, the fear response to dogs has continued to fade.
I welcomed her into my heart. It’s crazy how deeply I love this dog! You can’t love something you are afraid of.
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There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
1 John 4:18