Huge Step Forward

The day after the EMDR treatment, I woke up feeling stronger than ever. I also had a few insights that were helpful. The most helpful one was the Hawaii memory of “turtle cove.” That memory inspired me to take a huge step forward. The thought was if turtles could get passed their fear of going to the surface for air (despite the humans waiting around in the water watching them), I could try to get over my fear of looking at dogs in a shelter. As Nike says – just do it.

I had to take a trip to Santa Cruz to visit my son, and he had been discussing getting a dog to keep him company while away from home. I thought about how I could help him find a dog, and I decided I could get over my fear of going inside a shelter while tagging along with my son for protection. When I got to Santa Cruz, I mentioned that I had a strategy to go inside the animal shelter there. He would basically lead the way, and stop me if there was anything scary.

When we got there, the place was closed for lunch, so we had to wait outside. There were several volunteers walking dogs – one of them a pit bull. Surprise! But it wasn’t scary. It looked super friendly and submissive. It was white, not that intimidating tan color, but I was still proud that I didn’t jump out of my skin when I saw it. When the shelter opened for business about ten minutes later, I was ready to go inside.

My son led the way, and the first thing we saw was an artist print of my daughter kissing Chico ( created by Marvin Plumber). I had forgotten that she modeled for that piece two summers ago, and that it was made specifically for this purpose – to promote pet adoption. It was a nice welcome. Then we went to the dog adoption viewing area. Sure enough, there was that pit bull we had just seen outside. She wasn’t very scary, even inside her pen. I kept my back turned anyway though, because across from her was a little cutie pie named Capleton. He was a Cairn terrier mixed breed that was up for adoption.

My son was extremely interested in the dog, so we arranged to meet him. It was a little disappointing. The dog seemed intrigued by my son when we were outside the pen, but once face to face in the get acquainted areas; the dog was only interested in sniffing around and initiated very little contact with either of us. We decided to sleep on it.

I knew that there were photos of the available dogs online, so the next morning I searched for Capleton on the shelter’s website. It pushed me out to a site called Petfinder.com. Sure enough, there was Capleton. On a whim, I typed in Schnauzer, to see what came up. There were 1,875 matches. I began to get a new idea. Maybe I was ready to begin looking at doggies for me. I found several different ones that I inquired about. The cutest one was named Sydney.

At my last therapy visit, I spoke about how it may help me heal faster if I got a "therapy" dog. I'm not certain if I'm 100% ready, but I think simply the act of looking and thinking about it is helping me. Sydney looks really cute, and has many differences from Hardy. She has a little Schnauzer in her, but the fact that she is female, may help me not to compare the two. Hardy was as male as a dog could get. I still miss him, but maybe a new companion dog will help.