When I go out, it’s like I always have something to write about by the time I get back. But it only seems that way since I’m home most of the time. Of course, this doesn’t always happen like that. When it doesn’t, I have to depend on life handing me something interesting enough to write about.

So we were back from grocery shopping on an early Sunday evening. About to open our garage in the alleyway when all of a sudden this little white dog darts right out in front of our car. Some kids trying to catch it. My wife wants help, so she gets out of the car while I go park.

I walk across and they have it cornered. I can tell it’s scared. I’m not so sure it’s a good idea to try to pick it up but somehow my wife manages to get her hands on it.

It’s calm at first, but then starts freaking out. It nips my wife on the finger and manages to get away. The cat and mouse chase resumes until we have it trapped again. It’s sitting in the corner of the doorway to someone’s townhouse.

I approach and sit on the steps, trying to make myself as inconspicuous as possible while avoiding eye contact. I tell the three kids (one sister, two brothers) to give it some space and to not look directly into its eyes.

‘Yeah, don’t look into its eyes and stay back!’ they shout at each other while looking straight at it and getting closer.

I thought to myself, this dog must live close by since it’s not running very far. I’m unsuccessful in goading it out of the corner so I tell my wife I’m going to grab a leash. I pop the trunk open before forgetting I need to close the garage door first. The trunk door clunks against the open garage. My wife is across the way and has just noticed this the same time I have. Thankfully she’s so caught up in the excitement she forgets to yell at me.

As I walk back, some guy appears and strides along with me. He saw me on his Ring camera and wondered what was going on.

The guy’s wife comes out of their house too. We all stand around wondering what to do. I take a picture of the dog and go ring my neighbor’s doorbell to see if he knows it. He comes out, I show him the picture but he doesn’t recognize it. ‘Cute dog,’ he says. The reason I ask him is I remembered a long time ago he was chasing a dog around the neighborhood because it belonged to one of the people down the street. He has no idea what I’m talking about though and mentions the three houses down the block have all changed owners.

I get back and notice they’ve got it on our leash. It has a collar but no form of identification. Its lying on its back and everyone is taking turns rubbing its belly. I notice the evening has gotten dark. Kate takes a picture and posts it on Facebook. The guy does the same but uploads it to NextDoor. We all continue to stand there and it becomes apparent no one wants to go first. So I say, ‘Well, I’d take it in but I have two very unfriendly corgis.’ The guy’s wife mentions her dogs are very territorial.

All of a sudden this big Labradoodle-looking thing wanders in from nowhere without a leash and owner. The guy and I look at each other incredulously before I exclaim, ‘It’s raining dogs!’

The owner appears and gets the dog on his leash. I recognize him. It’s my neighbor, the one whose daughter I’ve recently started teaching piano to. I greet him but he doesn’t seem as surprised as I am. ‘Oh, hi Warren,’ he says.

‘Did you say hi to your piano teacher?’ he asks his daughter. We wave at each other and shortly afterwards they leave.

I turn around from saying goodbye and notice the guy and his wife have vanished. With a heavy sigh I announce to the kids that I’ll be taking care of the dog. We get back to the garage and the kids are inside petting it before I tell them we really have to get going now. Before they leave my wife asks their names. The sister and one of the brothers tells us. Very typical American-sounding names. They look Middle-Eastern so I was expecting something different. However, the other brother has an exotic-sounding one. I pronounce it out loud to make sure I get it right. ‘Did you say Ah-Dahn?’ I ask him.

‘No,’ he replies and looks at me for a second. ‘Adam.’

I’m not a cold-hearted person. It’s obvious to anybody how much I love dogs. But there’s a reason I don’t want to rescue any dog I see on the street. So I’m a bit mad at my wife, not because of her actions but because I’m the one who will suffer the consequences.

I tell her this dog is going to be her damn responsibility. That she better hope the owner finds it soon, otherwise what’re we going to do? Send it to a shelter where it’ll get killed off when nobody wants it? Fat chance. We’ll end up indefinitely fostering it and I know the more we take care of it the more attached we’ll get. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here, we’re not even sure how our boys will react to it. They are not exactly model canine citizens.

Let’s leave it in the garage, she says. This thing is skin and bones, it’ll freeze to death in there! I say. You better give the damn thing a bath and keep it separated.

Me? No way, that thing bit me.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFINE. So I trudge upstairs with the thing. Thankfully, the boys are very confused about this nocturnal visitor.

I take off its pink collar. I notice it’s filthy so I give it a good scrub. I confirm it’s a girl. Well, she barely weighs anything so her bath is done in no time. By the time I dry her she seems completely comfortable with me.

It’s late so I figure she must be hungry. She takes a few pieces before spitting them out. Must not be used to high-quality dog food. But then she gobbles it all up. I give her some slices of tomato and blueberries. She sniffs but doesn’t partake. Must not be used to vegetables and fruits. I examine her nails and find them to be too long. Her teeth are white (she must be young) but I can tell they haven’t been regularly brushed.

I give her a toy and she plays with it excitedly. It’s fun watching her nibble away at it. Winston remains aloof but to my amazement she and Kingston act like best friends! It looks like I won’t need the puppy gates so I set them aside. The kitchen’s too cramped for them so I take them upstairs. They’re having a blast with each other in the bedroom.

I’m having so much fun watching them.

My wife checks Facebook. Not a single message. ‘What the?’ she says.

‘There’s like five other lost dogs in here.’

During dinner it becomes obvious to me she’s a spoiled little princess. The way she’s begging, you can tell she’s used to table scraps. Whatever my opinion about her physical appearance, I can assume she has been treated very kindly. I think it’s not going to be so bad to take care of her, at least for a little bit. I resolve to take her with me to Winston’s appointment on Tuesday, to see if she’s microchipped.

I pet her. She settles down in one of the dog beds. I feel at peace watching her doze off.

I go to my room so I can finally get some reading done.

10:30 p.m.

My wife tells me there are people at the front door and I immediately know who it must be.

I go to open it and there is a man and a woman. Another man is standing a bit further off in the dark, on the sidewalk.

The man in front of me must be my neighbor but I’ve already forgotten what he looks like. As if he senses my confusion he points at himself and says, ‘your neighbor.’

He says the woman is the owner, that she saw his post on NextDoor. He says, ‘Turns out she’s actually my next-door neighbor!’ I don’t catch any of this for some reason (my wife is in the kitchen, listening via our doorbell camera app). As if to snap myself out of it I say, ‘Thank God!’ I go to the kitchen, grab her and reunite her with her owner. She is overjoyed, trembling and licking her face all over. She looks so happy. The owner does too. Before they leave I ask what her name is.

‘Lucy.’

Once they’re gone my wife says how proud she is of herself. That she felt she did the right thing.

Well that’s pretty damn easy for her to say.

I am wondering why I felt so disoriented when they showed up. I didn’t want to take care of this dog but at the same time I was disappointed when they showed up. Then I remember this is not the first time it’s happened. We were living in a cramped apartment when we found this Jindo-Gae wandering around the neighborhood. Friendly, no tag on its collar. A couple of days later we found his owners on Craigslist. My wife told me not to contact them. I wavered for a second. But no matter what I felt, I knew I had to do the right thing.

When the owners showed up they were overjoyed. To thank us they had brought an entire package of Pedigree canned dog food–which we donated to a shelter later. My wife cried afterwards.

I wanted to take care of Lucy long enough to feel our bond deepen. I was curious to see if I had changed.

Later, my mind keeps returning to the guy standing on the sidewalk. I tell my wife about him. He must’ve been the owner’s husband. He was kinda fat but that’s not what bothered me.

He wasn’t wearing a shirt.

‘Ew,’ she says.

Notes on the Process

Lucy was originally published in Pet Therapy Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

For a few hours, I was sure the worst was over. Raju had been weak for weeks, barely able to stand, and suddenly he was up again, walking from room to room, stopping beside each of us as though checking we were all there. When his eyes found mine, I smiled at him. I took it as good news. It was not good news. It was a goodbye, and I missed it.

(A quick note: this is the true story of Prince, a member of the Zaanvar team, about his Indian Spitz, Raju. It was shaped into this essay with AI assistance, using only what Prince shared in his own words.)

The dog I never asked for

I should be honest about where this starts. I was not a dog person. My brother was. When we heard that an uncle’s dog had just had puppies, my brother asked for one without hesitating, and the uncle said yes. That is how, in 2011, a tiny Indian Spitz came into our home.

I felt nothing when he arrived. He was my brother’s wish, not mine. Then work took my brother to another city, and the puppy stayed with us.

I can’t point to the day things changed, because there wasn’t one. It happened in small pieces: his innocent eyes, his tiny paws, the soft little sounds he made. Every time I left the house or came back, he would be near the gate, watching for me. Somewhere in those ordinary moments, I fell in love with him without noticing that I had.

Becoming his person

After that, Raju was mine to look after, and I wanted it that way. I fed him, bathed him, played with him and took him on walks. Before long, it wasn’t a chore. It was just how my days were built.

If I went to the farm, he came along. He slept right beside me and was the one who woke me every morning. On Sundays, he followed me to the chicken shop without fail, because nothing in the world made him happier than chicken.

He also decided, somewhere along the way, that he was my guard. If anyone raised their voice at me, even a little, he barked at them like he was ready to take on the whole world for me.

I have always been fussy about cleanliness. And yet, whenever I sat down to eat, his fur would somehow find its way into my food. I would look at him, ready to complain, and then see that innocent face. I never said a word. Not once.

He had a soft side that went beyond me. Once, when my mother was feeling emotional, Raju sat beside her and cried with her. There were many moments like that. He seemed to know when someone in the house needed him.

He was healthy his whole life, never a single health problem. He learned to go to the toilet outside and never once broke that habit indoors. He had a bath every other week and, unlike a lot of dogs, he loved it.

Learning to leave

In 2020, I had to move to a hostel for my studies. Walking away from a bond of nearly ten years was harder than I had imagined. And Raju felt it too.

Every holiday, he was at the door waiting. When I walked in, he jumped on me, completely overjoyed, and we spent every possible minute together. Then the holiday would end and I would leave again with a heavy heart. That rhythm of arriving and leaving carried on, year after year, until 2025.

The slow part

As he grew older, Raju started to weaken. We took him to the vet many times, and every vet told us the same thing: this was simply his age.

Day by day, standing became a struggle. He could not walk normally. He slept most of the time. Then he began spitting out the food he ate, and we knew we couldn’t wait. He couldn’t walk properly, so we got him treated.

And then, the surprise. He found the strength to walk a little. He followed my mother wherever she went. He even joined my father for a short walk. Watching him that evening, all of us let ourselves believe he was recovering.

The last night

Looking back now, I know it wasn’t recovery. It was the last time he showed us his love.

Through that night, he sat with each member of the family, one by one. He kept looking at me, again and again, as if there was something he needed me to understand. He stayed up with us until we went to sleep.

At midnight, I went to check on him. He was sleeping peacefully beside my brother. I remember thinking, He’s more active now. A few more days and he’ll be better.

The next morning his nose began to run, and we rushed him back to the vet.

Since he had become too weak to move, we had stayed by his side every single moment. That day, we stepped out for just half an hour.

When we came back, my mother was crying uncontrollably. Raju was lying still. The dog who had filled our home with love for fourteen years was gone. In that moment, the house felt emptier than it had ever felt before.

What I keep coming back to

There is one thought that returns to me, over and over, even now.

Maybe he knew.

Maybe that is why he gave my sister and me reasons to come home. Maybe that is why, on that final night, he gathered every bit of strength his body had left. He followed my mother. He walked with my father. He slept beside my brother. And he kept looking at me.

One by one, he went to each of us.

Maybe that was his goodbye. Maybe he didn’t want us to watch him go, and so, for half an hour, he let us step away, and then left quietly.

For fourteen years, he stood guard over our home. I like to think that even at the very end, he was still doing his job, still trying to make our tears a little softer.

I didn’t ask for a dog. I got Raju anyway. I’m grateful every day that I did.

Prince’s original tribute to Raju, with his own photos, lives on Zaanvar: A heartfelt tribute to Raju, my Indian Spitz, and our 14-year bond

The Night My Dog Visited Everyone, One by One was originally published in Pet Therapy Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I should be drinking coffee and reading a book right now. I should be at home, instead of this emergency clinic.

Third time. Two years.

At least we got insurance for him about a month ago, once it finally dawned on us what kind of dog he was.

The reason I’m here is the same as the previous two occasions: Kingston Felix’s inability to differentiate what does not belong inside his stomach.

It’s my first time at this particular clinic though, and I’m already a fan.

This place employs what you call an ‘open-space’ concept. Basically, there’s no lobby or room to wait in as your accident-prone furry companion is removed from your sight. You have front row seats to everything they do to and for your dog (this goes for the other dogs and their owners occupying this shared space).

But rather than staying a mere observer in the entire process, you become a participant. It has the effect of humanizing the experience–the memory of your parents standing next to you as the doctor administers his treatment.

So when your dog yelps as they inject him with a vomit-inducing substance, you wince. As he starts to convulse like an old lawn mower that keeps failing to start, you get queasy. Once the contents are eventually expelled onto the padding on the floor, you’re glad you didn’t have a big breakfast.

As an aside, your dog apparently does not chew his food well, as evidenced by the soggy, uneaten cereal-like mass that was inside him just a moment ago.

One of the staff comes by and starts sifting through the pile like she’s playing 52-card pickup. She’s taking longer than expected and my apprehension is rising (i’ve been told the cause of today’s visit doesn’t show up well in x-rays, and who knows what the next step will be if it comes down to that). Then suddenly elation, followed by instant mortification as she finds that which I was so embarrassed to refer to by name (she says they remove this very same object once a week. if she’s lying i do not care because it makes me feel better. and for those of you with morbid curiosities, it begins with a t and ends with an n).

I now want all my subsequent visits to be like this; I like the idea of having nothing to hide.

But there’s a limit to how much I would want to see. For example, I’d like to very much not be in the operating room. In a similar vein, I’d like to turn a blind eye as to how the chicken I’m going to eat later was prepared for my eventual consumption.

Then I start thinking about how seeing what usually remains invisible isn’t always helpful. Like the time the doctor called to inform me she found a suspicious growth on Kasper’s x-rays. No way to determine the exact nature of said suspicious growth without additional tests. Additional tests not recommended due to his advanced age. And even if the hypothetical test results showed a negative finding, the resulting surgeries would in all likelihood not be worth the risk.

What’s interesting is that the closer we got to the end, the stronger my belief became in God. There were clear limitations to what I could do, but that didn’t stop me from accepting the unknown and adjusting accordingly.

I hate being kept in the dark though. It’s hard not to feel sad when in those ten minutes at the emergency clinic, I trusted those people more than my own parents my entire life.

Why did they always ask me to take them at their word when their actions frequently told me otherwise? Why were promises made to be broken?

Those feelings are in the past, but this does nothing for my worries as they get older. The topics we discuss become less important and more trivial. They act like they’re going to be around forever, instead of talking about what’s going to happen when they’re gone.

What my parents want is for me to take them at face value, to trust that everything is taken care of and will be accounted for. What they fail to understand is how much this hurts me, that what I want more than anything is for them to tell me right now instead having to find this all out later. By myself.

Maybe I’d be better off thinking of them not as my parents, but as gods.

I don’t have this problem with my dogs though. I love them very much. I’ll do anything for them.

With them I never have to guess.

Notes on the Process

Transparency was originally published in Pet Therapy Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’ve never felt this good about myself.

The changes have been drastic. The time in which they’ve occurred has been short.

No processed foods. Less white rice. More fruits and vegetables. Chicken and seafood. Red meat just once a week, if at all. Minimal alcohol consumption.

From barely touching the stove to cooking every night. I’d given up on being consistent with this. Too time-consuming. Wife too picky.

Turns out all I needed was a wok.

It feels guilty to say this but it’s like all I did was flip a switch. Basically, I bought some books and put into action what I read.

Why has it been so easy?

I’ve tried, and failed, many a time in many similar situations. Yet the fear of history repeating itself is practically nil.

What feels so different now?

Truth be told, it was a long road to get here.

I read Incerto again for the first time in many years. But it had never sunk in this deeply before. All of it felt both new and familiar.

I realized I had been using knowledge to fool myself. The more I knew, the more intelligence I thought I had. I had become the person Taleb had actually warned me not to become, someone who lacked the humility to admit he knew less than he did.

I was wrong about so many things.

What surprised me though, is that this revelation brought relief. I didn’t feel like a failure any more, instead it felt like I was learning to pay attention. I yearned to investigate what else I had been wrong about, things like my health and my worldview.

This is the only plausible reason I can think of as to why the changes have been sticking, and why I’ve been so endlessly curious to see what other possibilities exist.

The seed was planted much earlier than this.

Before Incerto, I discovered that nothing had a larger influence on my writing than the books I read. By the time my reading habit solidified, I tried something ambitious.

I submerged myself in the works of one writer or author at a time. I had never done anything at this scale before. I read Bukowski, Didion, Knausgaard. Something strange happened after a few months. It felt less like reading and more like inhabiting a consciousness. I noticed why decisions were made rather than the lines that were written. Their questions became my own. Style, voice, and character all became secondary.

When I finally came up for air, my surroundings were the same but everything else was different.

What motivated me to do this?

Previously, I dedicated myself to the simple art of improving my writing. For all intents and purposes, I started at the bottom. Concerned myself at the level of sentence construction. Attempted to get my points across as clearly as possible. Forced myself to put down only words that mattered.

Where did this obsession come from?

I had Kasper for 17 years.

One day I saw he had gotten old, very old. The final chapter had arrived. I never saw it coming. I was forced to admit he wouldn’t live forever. I found this almost impossible to accept, so it triggered a midlife crisis of sorts.

I started to take writing seriously. It was the only thing that was helping me to come to terms with the fact he wouldn’t be around much longer. Once I committed to this, time couldn’t move slowly enough. That last year went by in a flash, yet it meant more to me than the entire time I had him.

Than my entire life.

The end approached. I prepared to say goodbye. I said goodbye. He went away.

I missed him as soon as he left.

It almost feels like I’ve kept on writing to be able to share this with you. Yet I remain unsatisfied–I still can’t quite find the right words to convey how important he was to me.

The more uncertain I am, the more I write.

One thing I can’t deny is that my life has changed for the better since his passing. I was often fond of saying he left me better than he found me.

I’m not so sure this is a good thing any more.

I can’t honestly say that I wouldn’t trade it all away, just to have him back again.

Notes on the Process

Foundation was originally published in Pet Therapy Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I don’t feel like I’ve ever had a home.

I don’t mean in the physical sense. Even if I did, I never felt this way in any house I ever lived in.

I’ve never felt this in my skin either.

Korean or American?

Neither here nor there.

I thought if I hung out with my own kind I’d stop trying to figure out who I was. But this matter of identity didn’t seem to concern them–if it did they never showed it.

And no matter how I tried to act like them or talk like them, it was obvious I didn’t fit in.

I didn’t think like they did.

Honestly, I should have left–but where would I have gone?

Better to put up with the pain than be alone.

But you end up on your own anyways.

It’s not so bad (you find this out later).

You learn a lot about yourself without anything to distract you any more.

You aren’t as bad as you were made out to be.

Different is all.

Different still.

Where is home?

I don’t know if I’ll ever find out.

You would think this would make me care less where I live, but somehow it doesn’t.

For example, my wife keeps bringing up this future reality of Taiwan (her home).

But I’d rather avoid going somewhere where I feel even more like a permanent outsider. At least we speak the same language here.

When we were almost done walking the other day, we wanted to see if Winston could lead us back. We let him walk ahead of us and soon we were at our front door.

This is his home.

His mom lives here.

This is where Kingston also lives.

For the longest time, Kasper lived here too. So did Meeko.

I guess I have a home after all.

Notes on the Process

Home was originally published in Pet Therapy Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

My wife’s friend called us crazy when we got Felix, especially so soon after losing Kasper.

When my own friend found out, he told me, ‘Wow, ready for heartbreak all over again.’

It’s easy to understand why people never get another dog. That first time you bring them home, you never think they’ll be leaving you one day. Even if you’re more realistic than most, you tell yourself that moment is far, far away in the very, very distant future.

Mostly, it feels like they’re going to be around forever.

It’s so easy to get attached to this idea, since you get so easily attached to them.

It comes as a surprise when I notice they’ve gotten older. Winston is nine years old now, but he was a puppy just yesterday. And it’s not possible that Felix is going to be two.

I’ve gotten older too, but it wasn’t so sudden.

Kasper and I grew older together.

All those years with him just flew by, I have no idea where it all went. Yet now that he’s gone I’ve never felt time move so slowly.

I understand why people don’t get another dog. Hopefully it doesn’t happen for a while, but eventually that intense period of sadness arrives.

But it’s just for a brief while, we tend to forget what pain magnifies.

I still get those pangs here and there. I still get them, but they’re no longer strong enough to overpower all the wonderful memories I have of him.

I can look at his pictures and smile.

I love him more than I ever have.

I love Meeko too, even if I don’t think about him nearly as much.

I love Winston and Kingston no less.

I understand. I get it but I think people leave so much on the table.

There’s so much good they’ve brought into my life, and it took a second loss to realize that.

You know, I might just be rationalizing this away. Maybe I’ll never get another dog once they’re both gone.

Then again, if I thought that way I would have never gotten them in the first place.

I can’t stand the thought of them being a part of someone else’s life. I can’t accept that they might have been happier somewhere else.

I don’t ever want to imagine what I’d be missing out on.

I know.

I know I’ll be sad again one day.

But for now I’m the happiest person I know.

Notes on the Process

I Know was originally published in Pet Therapy Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Winston is usually on the slow side, but he always quickens his pace whenever my wife joins us on our walks.

For a while I thought this was because our trio suddenly became a full quartet, but now I see it otherwise.

When it’s just me, it seems Winston can tell he’s tethered to Kingston. Even though I walk them on separate leashes, I am the center of gravity pulling them together.

The problem is that Winston wants as much distance as possible, Kingston being incapable of understanding the meaning of personal space.

This was never a problem when Kasper was around. Nothing was much of a problem when Kasper was around. In fact, you could say Winston was the actual problem.

Kasper was the type of dog who accepted everybody–people and animals alike. If you’ve never experienced it, this kind of acceptance is tantamount to liberation:

Freedom.

This is probably what Winston feels when my wife is there, when she becomes the factor separating him from Kingston.

This is what I felt once I unshackled myself from my family.

With them, I only ever experienced the complete opposite of acceptance:

Slavery.

But that independence soon became a curse. They were my center of gravity; once I lost that, I couldn’t do anything other than drift aimlessly.

Then I met my wife. Then I met Kasper.

And then I finally had the right attachments to keep me grounded.

The irony is that you give up a certain amount of your newfound freedom in the process. You trade that for the responsibilities of marriage and dog ownership.

But marriage turned out to be totally different than what I initially believed. We have what I think are radically separate lives, but the resulting individual happiness we’ve found is what keeps us together.

Then again, no matter how separate our lives are, we willingly organize them to keep our dogs happy.

In my case, I’ve taken on the entirety of caretaking duties, seeing as how I spend all my time with them at home.

Freedom in chains–I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Notes on the Process

Freedom was originally published in Pet Therapy Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The first night I brought Max home, I sat on the bathroom floor and cried.

Not the happy kind.

He had barked for three hours straight and knocked overa glass of water. Chewed the corner of a rug I’d had for six years. And when I finally got him to stop barking by sitting next to his crate, he just stared at me with those huge, wet eyes—completely unbothered.

I thought, What have I done?

The Feeling Nobody Talks About

I had wanted a dog for years.

I’d done the research and watched the videos. Bought the right crate, the right food, and the right leash. I had a whole Pinterest board called “Max’s New Life” before I even picked him up from the shelter.

And then he came home, and something inside me just… broke.

Not because I didn’t love him. But because I was exhausted, overwhelmed, and completely unprepared for how hard it actually was.

The worst part wasn’t the chewed rug or the accidents on the floor.

The worst part was the thought I couldn’t say out loud: maybe I made a mistake.

That thought felt monstrous. It made me a bad person.

So I kept it to myself.

There’s a Name for This

I didn’t know it then, but what I was feeling is called the puppy blues — a very real, very common wave of depression, anxiety, and overwhelm that hits new dog owners in those first weeks.

It can arrive whether you adopted a puppy or an adult dog. Whether it’s your first pet or your fourth. Whether you planned it for months or acted on impulse.

The puppy blues don’t care about your Pinterest board.

What I’ve come to understand is this: you and your dog just became strangers living together. There was no slow introduction. No casual coffee dates. You skipped all the awkward getting-to-know-you stages and went straight to sharing a home, a routine, and your entire nervous system.

Of course, it’s hard.

The Part That Made It Worse

Max had a problem I hadn’t expected.

He was reactive.

On walks, the moment he saw another dog—or a stranger walking too fast, or a child on a bicycle—he would erupt. Barking, lunging, spinning on the leash. Full-body panic, every single time.

I’d come home from every walk feeling defeated.

I tried everything I could think of. Treats. Firm “no.” Distracting him with toys. YouTube tutorials at midnight. I even tried just avoiding other dogs entirely, which in a city is basically impossible.

Nothing worked. And the walks — the one thing that was supposed to be peaceful — became something I dreaded.

I started to pull away from him. Not physically, but emotionally. I was protecting myself.

That’s when the regret really dug in.

What Finally Shifted

A friend — who had gone through something similar with her own dog — mentioned she’d used an online program to work through reactivity. She wasn’t evangelical about it. Just said quietly: “It actually helped us.”

I was skeptical. I’d tried so many things.

But I was also desperate.

I found The Online Dog Trainer — a program specifically built around reactive dogs and the anxiety that drives their behavior. It wasn’t just obedience commands. It helped me understand why Max was reacting the way he was and what he actually needed from me in those moments.

Slowly, the walks changed.

He still noticed other dogs. But the eruptions became shorter. Then less frequent. Then, one Tuesday morning, we passed a golden retriever on a narrow sidewalk, and Max just… looked at it and kept walking.

I stood there for a second. Heart pounding.

Then I reached down and gave him the entire treat pouch.

The Love That Came Anyway

I won’t tell you the regret disappeared overnight.

It faded — the way a bruise fades. Slowly, unevenly, and then one day you press the spot and it doesn’t hurt anymore.

Max sleeps at the foot of my bed now. He waits at the door when I leave and loses his mind when I come back — every single time, as if I’ve been gone for years.

He is the most inconvenient, expensive, exhausting thing I have ever chosen.

And when I think about that night on the bathroom floor, the version of me sitting there doesn’t feel stupid or wrong.

She was just in the hard part.

Nobody told her how long the hard part lasts. Nobody told her it doesn’t last forever.

If You’re in the Hard Part Right Now

You’re not a bad person.

You’re not failing.

You’re just in the part that comes before the love fully settles in — and it is harder than anyone admits.

If your dog is struggling with reactivity and it’s making everything harder, this was the one resource that genuinely helped us: The Online Dog Trainer’s reactivity program. I’m not a trainer. I’m just someone who was on the bathroom floor and eventually wasn’t.

Give it time. Ask for help. Let yourself feel what you feel.

The dog doesn’t know you’re struggling. He just knows you stayed.

I Regretted Adopting My Dog. I’m Not Ashamed to Say It. was originally published in Pet Therapy Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The collar arrived in a box that said “HUMANE TRAINING TOOL” on the side.

I appreciated that. I needed someone to tell me it was humane. I was telling myself it was humane approximately forty times a day.

Let Me Set the Scene

My dog’s name is Biscuit. He is thirty-seven pounds of pure, unhinged joy. He barks at the mailman, the mail, the mailbox itself, and one time — I am not exaggerating — a shadow that looked like it might become a person at some point.

He had already been through two trainers, one behaviorist, and a woman named Linda, who came to the house with crystals.

Linda said Biscuit had “a lot of energy to move through.”

Linda was not wrong. Linda also charged two hundred dollars and left me with a pamphlet about chakras.

After Linda, I was open to anything.

The Purchase

I found the collar at 11:47 PM on a Tuesday.

This is important context. Nothing good has ever been purchased at 11:47 PM on a Tuesday. At 11:47 PM on a Tuesday, I have also purchased a dehydrator, a self-help book about running that I have not opened, and a full set of watercolor paints “to get into painting.” I do not paint.

The listing said the collar had 123 adjustable levels.

One hundred and twenty-three.

I don’t have 123 levels of anything. I have like four moods, and one of them is just “hungry.”

I bought it anyway.

Day One

The collar arrived on a Thursday, which felt like a sign. Thursday is an optimistic day. Thursday is almost Friday. Thursday says: This could work."

I read the instruction manual. The instruction manual was fifteen pages long and included a section titled “Understanding Your Dog’s Mind.” I skimmed it. I’m a skimmer. This will become relevant.

I put the collar on Biscuit.

Biscuit looked at me like I had personally betrayed a sacred bond.

Then he went and sat in his bed, still staring at me, and did not move for twenty minutes.

I thought, It's working.

Reader, it was not working. He was just tired. He’d had a big morning.

Day Four

By day four, I had not actually used the shock function.

Not because I had moral clarity. I want to be honest with you. I had very little moral clarity at this point in my life. I had a dog who had just barked at a parked car.

I didn’t use it because every time I picked up the remote, Biscuit would look at me.

Just look at me.

With his big dumb eyes.

And something would happen in my chest, some terrible small collapse, and I would put the remote back down and say “good boy” for no reason at all.

This is not training. This is being emotionally defeated by a thirty-seven-pound animal daily.

The Thing That Actually Happened

What actually happened was this.

I was standing in the backyard at 7 AM in my pajamas, holding a remote control for a collar on a dog who was barking at a leaf — a leaf — and I thought:

Why am I doing this?

Not rhetorically. Actually. Why was I trying to make him stop being what he is — a loud, reactive, desperately enthusiastic creature — instead of helping him feel safe enough that he didn’t need to be?

He wasn’t broken. He was scared. He’d been scared since before I got him, probably. Shelter dogs carry things. You can’t shock the scared out of them. You can only sit with them in it long enough until it starts to ease.

I put the remote in the junk drawer. It’s still there, between a dead AA battery and a coupon for a restaurant that closed in 2023.

What I Did Instead

I found a program that actually explained what was happening in Biscuit’s brain instead of just trying to interrupt the explosion after it happened.

Less than 123 levels of static. More: why does he do this, and what does he actually need?

It took time. It was not a montage. There was no triumphant music.

But Biscuit stopped barking at the parked car. Then the leaf. Then — mostly — the mailbox.

The mailman is still a work in progress. We respect the process.

The Part Where I Admit the Real Thing

Here’s what I didn’t expect to learn from a thirty-seven-pound dog with a reactivity problem:

Patience is not something you have. It’s something you practice. Every single day, you either practice it or you don’t. And the days you don’t, you end up on Amazon at 11:47 PM buying things you don’t need.

Biscuit did not need 123 levels of correction.

He needed one thing: someone willing to slow down enough to understand him.

I’m still working on being that person.

He’s still working on the mail.

We’re doing it together.

Biscuit is currently asleep next to me. He is snoring. Earlier today, he barked at a pigeon for four full minutes. We are, nonetheless, making progress.

I Strapped a Shock Collar on My Dog. He Didn’t Learn Anything. I Did. was originally published in Pet Therapy Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.