I have a lot to say about this photo.
Thought #1
Riley was scared because of the loud upstairs neighbor. She stood in the middle of the living room and I could see her considering her options.
- Run and hide in her crate in the bedroom
- Run and hide in her crate in the living room
- Hide backed into a corner, or
- Run to my arms.
Fear short circuits the brain, it often doesn’t matter that we have a lot of options in a situation where fear and anxiety are taking control. We tend to lean on what we’ve practiced. It’s not enough to say, “The option was there.” You have to learn by doing so that the response/choice becomes automatic. This was her first step in developing a new pattern.
She chose to run to my arms.
She shook for a moment and when I laid my hand on her, she relaxed, sighed deeply, and fell asleep.
She had plenty of options to try to deal with her fear by herself but she chose my arms, my support, and to trust that I would take care of her and hold her through it.
You and I get this invitation from Jesus all the time – the invitation to run to His arms in the face of fear and allow His perfect love to chase the fear away and His perfect peace to hold us through whatever is going on.
Thought #2
For the past 3 years, I have followed conventional dog training wisdom trying to help Riley through her fear of overhead noises. That wisdom says I must not allow her into my space when she’s feeling anxious and fearful, and instead encourage her to deal with it on her own even if that means she’s trembling and shaking in fear for hours.
I’m not saying this concept doesn’t work for some dogs in some situations, but it wasn’t working for Riley. All it did was increase her fear and send her slinking into isolation with nowhere to turn for direction or help.
I believe there is a time and place to let a dog work through things on their own, this can build confidence and empower them to self-soothe and work through difficult things. But, even in that process, it doesn’t hurt for there to be leadership, guidance, and support. And, this is where I departed from conventional training wisdom and started seeking ways to help MY dog, in a way that worked for both of us.
The idea that somehow she should have the capacity to self-soothe when she was completely over her threshold and trembling in terror did not sit well with me. I recognized that there had to be an element of calm for her to grab hold of if she was going to self-soothe, and when she was that far into fear, chaos, and noise, calm was not something she had the capacity to randomly generate out of thin air, and it wasn’t fair of me to ask her to. I couldn’t do it, why should she be able to?
What she needed was not to be pushed away but to be brought in close. She needed me to be that presence of calm until she could get to the place where she could self-soothe. And she needed me to recognize that. The psychological term for this is co-regulation – regulating emotions together.
So, a few weeks ago, I stopped forcing her to do something she was incapable of and started opening my arms and inviting her to come to me (not forcing or commanding). I was creating a space she could come if she wanted. Essentially giving her another tool in her toolkit.
At first, she wouldn’t. It was as if she didn’t trust that it would be okay. But after sleeping through the noises in a crate I put in the living room several weeks ago, something shifted.
From her crate, she had been able to watch me, see my reaction to the noises from a safe place, and know I was there and she was welcome to come closer to me if she wanted. It was a brand new option for her because running to the crate in the bedroom had always completely isolated her from me. She took in loads of new information and discovered options she had never had before.
When she first ran to me, she was shaking and pressing into me so hard I thought she was going to crush my windpipe. I tried to adjust her and get her into a position where I could hold her and love her without suffocating. It took well over an hour for her to relax.
The fifth or sixth time she ran to my arms instead of hiding, she was still shaking but it only lasted 10 minutes and she wasn’t in a flat panic. She got comfortable and relaxed. It was working. She came into my space and my peace helped displace her panic.
Last night, in the picture above, there was only a brief moment of shaking before a surrendered sigh of relief as she fell asleep on my lap.
Nothing changed about the outward circumstances. The noise was not quieter or less intrusive. The fear was not gone. I simply chose to follow my heart instead of conventional wisdom and what I had had her trainers tell me to do.
How do I know it’s working?
About an hour after falling asleep in my arms with the noise was still going on, she jumped off the couch, laid on her bed – fully exposed to the overhead noises – and went back to sleep.
It had worked. I was not diminishing her ability to self-soothe but empowering it by helping her get to a space where self-soothing was possible.
This reminded me of something God spoke to me a long time ago.
He said, “Beloved, it’s easy to do what everyone else tells you is correct because if it’s not, you can blame them. But when you stand in a situation and make your own decision without leaning on the so-called wisdom of the world and those around you, when you choose from your own spirit and mind, then you are responsible for your success or failure. Don’t be so afraid to fail that you blindly follow others just to avoid taking responsibility for the results. You always have a choice to do things another way.“
In this case, I chose to do things another way and the choice is paying huge dividends for Riley and our relationship.
Would this work for another dog? Maybe. Maybe not. But I’m not concerned about what works for other dogs. My one responsibility is to do what is best for my dog.
Thought #3
Riley wasn’t thinking about how her fear would impact me when she finally came and jumped in my arms. And there was an impact. Her weight, the discomfort of those bony elbows in my clavicle, and the pressure against my throat created some discomfort which required shifting a bit so I could hold that space for her. But, I love her and I am equipped to do the things I need to do to be a safe place for her.
Despite the discomfort, despite the necessary shifting and adjusting, I wanted her with me. I invited her to make that choice. And I did it without putting any pressure on her to make it. I simply let her know she had the option to come to my arms.
For her, hiding would have been easier because it was the choice she had practiced for so long. Doing something different coming to me required strength of will and tremendous trust. It’s not easy coming to someone else for help and support when you’re going through something loaded with big emotions.
Anxiety feeds on isolation but in the presence of someone who understands and can just be there and provide a safe space to work through it, it begins to dissipate and lose its power.
Holding Riley, I was reminded again just how much we need community. You and I, we need one another. We need to learn to be a safe place for those around us and while allowing them to be safe places for us. And all the while, practice running to the open arms of God, Who is our ultimate safe place, no matter what is going on in our lives.
As we experience the safety and security of His presence in the space He invites us into, we are empowered to bring the comfort and strength of His presence into our relationships with other people. And this is the place, resting in God and learning to rely on one another, where true strength begins and where breakthroughs and transformation come to life.
