28/09/2025
One night with a nervous dog reminded me why I write. Every clash, every surrender, every lesson becomes ink. I thought once about becoming a counsellor — but this is how I practice psychology every day.
When a Nervous Dog Teaches You About Trust
Last night was my first overnight with a new dog.
I’ve done hundreds of training sessions, but every time I stay with a dog like this, it still feels as powerful as that very first time, fourteen years ago.
Because this is what most people don’t see:
a dog’s belly-up isn’t always an invitation for a rub.
Sometimes it’s an act of vulnerability.
It’s saying, “Here I am at my most defenseless—please don’t touch me.”
And yet, humans so often reach in without reading the room.
Trust starts backwards.
This dog had met me in sessions before, but always with its owner present, always briefly.
Now it was just the two of us.
We walked, we searched the house for his person, we came back.
A slow kinship started to build.
Later, on the sofa, he rolled over next to me.
This time, the context said “it’s okay.”
I gave a gentle stroke. Nothing forced.
Moments like that are small but sacred.
Hours passed. I was lost in my writing near midnight — trying to shape stories for children while quietly fighting with myself about failed images — when he suddenly barked.
A deep, startled bark that shook the room and pulled me to my feet.
He lunged toward the window, certain it was his job to guard.
I lunged toward him, forgetting it was mine to lead.
In that instant we clashed — he had stepped out of his role as follower, and I had stepped out of mine as leader.
Two forces in the wrong place at the wrong time, both out of balance.
Then I caught myself.
I breathed. Dropped my shoulders.
I came back into the calm of leadership.
And he — almost immediately — sank back into the harmony of following.
That’s the synchronicity I live for: not forcing, not correcting with words, but showing the way.
Projecting the state I wanted us both to be in — and watching him find it too.
People think separation anxiety comes from too much love.
Most of the time, it’s the opposite.
Dogs take the role of leader because we don’t.
They’re confused when the “pack” leaves without them.
They believe they need to guide us.
And here’s the irony: most of the time, they’re right.
Dogs sense what we ignore — how unbalanced we really are.
That’s why they don’t trust us to handle the world without them.
We call it separation anxiety, but they call it leadership.
We forget our inner power, so they try to carry it for us.
Undoing that wiring takes time.
Each time you show up calm, consistent, and present,
the dog learns: “You’ll protect me. You’ve got this. I can rest.”
That’s the moment I live for.
It’s humbling.
It’s silent magic.
And that’s why, even after fourteen years, I still feel the awe.
I feel the passion and the drive—not to call myself a behaviourist, not to call myself a writer—but to absorb this understanding, heal myself through it, and then bleed it into ink, to be left on a shelf
as the ink remembers what we forget.
Moments like this are why I write.
Every clash, every surrender, every lesson with a dog becomes both test and teacher.
The page is where I acknowledge them, break them apart, and rebuild them into something I can carry forward.
The book isn’t out yet — it’s still in the making.
I don’t know how long it will take, but I know this: it will reflect every part I can pour into it.
This is why I bleed ink onto the page.
Because if this single night feels powerful, it’s only a glimpse.
Art of the Mutt will go deeper still — fragments and fractals upon fractals — of what dogs have taught me about leadership, balance, and myself.
This is just the spark.
The book will be the fire.
