How to Open to Unexpected Love

What my new handful of a pup taught me about expectation, perfectionism, and entering into relationships with other beings.

With all that’s happening right now, I feel like I should be writing about war. About democracy, or how lawful immigrants feel like they can’t leave the U.S. to visit their families in other countries, or attacks on veterans and people with disabilities and gender and sexuality and reproductive rights and public lands.

Instead, I’m writing about love—the unexpected kind. About opening our hearts and letting go of perfectionism and expectation and the most unlikely teachers for it.

For all the years after my canine soulmate died, I said, to everyone who asked, that I would never get another dog. No other pooch would measure up to The One. Plus, I didn’t want to be tied down. My husband and I have no children, we have freelance jobs where we make our own schedules, and can travel or adventure at whim (finances permitting—we’re both writers, after all).

That’s not to say I don’t love dogs. In fact, it’s what I chose to donate my time to in the midst of all the political and social chaos this year: walk dogs for the Humane Society. A selfish donation, that’s for sure, given it didn’t make anyone’s life better except mine and the dog’s I walked on any given day.

Anyone who knew me knew where this volunteering would lead. One could say I was unconsciously, casually shopping. But it was still a surprise, even to me, when my husband and I brought home a two-year-old stray mutt from the shelter at the end of March. She was absolutely amazing for the first two days. “We lucked out!” we said to each other.

And then she turned into... a handful, to put it politely. She barked at old people on the trail. She chased cars. And bikers. And runners. And the dog across our fence. She dug holes in the yard. She growled at my mom. And she pinned dog after dog. She never lost a fight. Not that Ben and I waited around to see what would happen after she’d gotten the unfortunate offenders on their backs. No lawsuits for us, thanks.

I wanted to give her back. I’m not going to lie. You can judge me all you want. This was not the kind of relationship I wanted or understood. My first dog had been my companion right away. I hadn’t had to train her at all. She was a dream. This dog made me hate myself for having to discipline her. We had to get a prong collar (you can keep judging). I hated having to correct her with it. I laid awake nights simmering with anxiety that we’d never be able to take her camping or skiing or hiking, never be able to let her off leash to just run. That my sister’s family, who was supposed to be our go-to-dog-share family, would never want to watch her. We’d made a huge mistake. I didn’t even tell half my friends that we’d adopted a dog, in case we had to give her back. I didn’t want to have to explain myself for that.

But then (oh, predictable plot twist) we ended up falling in love with her. Even for all her “faults”. She clearly loved us. She let my niece and nephew drape themselves all over her. And damn, she showed herself to be smart. We invested some money from our tight budget in a trainer to help us with a few sessions, mostly to teach us how to train our dog. It turns out that Raven, as we named our little prize fighter terror, only wants to fit into the pack. She just needs us to show her how, with patience and trust and lots of love. She never means to mess up. She’s always doing her best.

Which meant I needed to give her my best, too.

Just last week, I went out with our trainer (who, by the way, is a wonder worker who’s trained dogs in rural India to protect people from tigers—seriously) to learn how to teach Raven to meet other dogs without immediately trying take them out. It meant I had to put a shock collar on her, and be willing to learn how to use it (yep, judge away). And my god, Raven was doing so amazingly over the next several days of practice with me that I decided I hadn’t been giving her enough credit.

Ben had been away on assignment, and when I proudly took him on a walk with us to show off our astounding progress... Raven fought and pinned another dog so fast I didn’t even have time to shock her. Luckily, it was the dog of a friend, who was very understanding—she used to have an aggressive rescue pup, too—and promised not to slap us with an expensive lawsuit.

Shit, I thought. We’re never going to have the dog I want, with the anxiety-free walks and adventures and companionship that I envision as part of the life I want.

My friend texted me later that evening. She told me that even her current dogs, who are well behaved, sometimes have issues with other dogs. “It’s been a real lesson in my own perfectionism, and accepting that my dogs don’t have to be perfect to be awesome.”

It seems obvious what a fitting analogy this is for life in general. You can literally apply it everywhere. I just forgot how easy it is to lose sight of it.

It can be hard to open our hearts to different kinds of love than those that came before. Raven is so different from my first dog. I love her differently. I know now that that’s okay. I still love her with my whole heart. I can’t even imagine her not being part of our little family now (and my niece and nephew would frankly kill me if I ever gave her back anyway).

I also know that it’s a big deal to enter into a relationship with another being. We both deserve the effort of always doing our best, and recognizing that in the other. Again, an obvious analogy for life, but it bears pointing out that it’s a good time to apply that sentiment to our fellow beings on this Earth.

Now I need to play with my pup. Go and find a little love too, y’all. Be sure to look in the unexpected places.