Paws and Reflect

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Paws and Reflect 🚐 Full-time travel with a sensitive heeler
💭 Emotions, fulfillment, training, nuance

12/11/2025

What do you think? We had a good laugh about Scout’s “breakfast show” this morning.

She used to deeply struggle with self regulation around livestock. Any animal dog-sized or larger sent her into a conflicting mix of arousal (and then any animal smaller than a dog felt like prey... so really, she just struggled to keep her head on straight around other creatures in general 😅)

The year I adopted Scout, we booked an Airbnb on a farm—and it was a bit of a fiasco. If she could so much as glimpse horses outside through the tiny gap in the cabin’s curtains, she was unable to settle without a ton of input from us. We managed, even then, but I would not call that trip relaxing.

Of course, some of this is expected for a herding breed. Humans bred cattle dogs to control other animals’ movement! What was not healthy was how much of Scout’s reactions stemmed from fear, though. Species- and breed-appropriate drives are one thing; insecurity is another.

Which is why it’s still exciting to see her like this.

We recently stayed at a beautiful working farm where Scout occasionally watched the cows go about their business and otherwise lounged outside like there was nothing at all going on. (That’s especially important when we are a guest at someone else’s home! The fact that the cattle felt clearly comfortable, not changing their behavior as a result of our presence, was the biggest win to me.)

I could wax poetic about how much training went into this, and that is completely true. Scout’s confidence and emotional regulation are the things we worked hardest on! But I’m also realizing, this morning, how much of her recent behavior in these situations also reflects the fact that she’s getting older. It’s been years now that she’s been able to settle around stimulation like this—we’ve been able to be around livestock without hassle since moving into the van—but I can see how she’s slowing down, how it’s not just impulse control and fulfillment but also a little bit of “eh, I’m tired, let the world go by around me”, how she went from needing an occasional reminder from us to needing zero guidance whatsoever.

Love you lots, fake cattle dog 💛

So here’s a fun personal tidbit for you: The last time I was in the redwoods, I got engaged!But not to my current partne...
08/11/2025

So here’s a fun personal tidbit for you: The last time I was in the redwoods, I got engaged!

But not to my current partner.

It was the summer of 2017, and I had just turned 20, and my ex and I went on a roadtrip before I started my final year of college. When he got down on one knee in a grove of ancient trees, the first thing I felt was a jolt of sour disappointment (though I wouldn’t admit that aloud until many months later).

There were dozens of signs I ignored and justified and pretended not to see, but one that sticks out, given how my life has progressed, is this: My ex was uncomfortable with how much I loved my family’s husky.

“Go cry to Snort about it,” he once texted when I was sick and reached out for support. “It seems like you care about her the most anyway.”

I can’t believe I was ever with (let alone engaged to be married to) someone like that. I especially can’t believe it when I look at the ones I am with now. Do you see what I see in this picture? Look closely: Sean actively sharing his decaf with Scout. Finding it adorable to invite her up next to him. Calling her “sweetheart” and “lover pup” and “Scooter-inho”.

Never ever even considering turning my love for this dog into an argument between us humans.

I didn’t know what partnership could actually look like—how it could sit in my stomach as the opposite of the heavy pit I’d come to know—and as much as it sometimes feels weird to talk about my past self in that past relationship, it also feels important. Because maybe she’s out there, somewhere, not knowing. And maybe she could stumble upon these words and see.

We have been two best friends finding beaches—and posing on them in “middle” position!—for so many years now 💛 Not bad f...
06/11/2025

We have been two best friends finding beaches—and posing on them in “middle” position!—for so many years now 💛 Not bad for two creatures from the landlocked Midwest.

It’s not lost on me that the vast majority of my reflections re Scout lately include some version of staring back at the past. I used to be so forward-looking: I’d end most captions with “onwards and upwards, cattle dog!” and mean it wholeheartedly. It felt like we had mountains to climb and miles to go until she grew into the dog I’d dreamed of (and I became the person she deserved). I guess that happened at some point, sort of quietly. Like John Green wrote all those years ago in his most famous novel: “the way you fall asleep, slowly and then all at once.”

Of course, we ARE still excited about the future. We’ve got a lot of adventure left in us, me and this dog and our Sean and our yellow van! But there’s nothing we haven’t accomplished that I still desperately want to, which is both peaceful and strange, sometimes, particularly because so much of my psyche surrounding dog ownership was about optimizing and growing and doing more more more for so long.

I remember the very first time we brought Scout to the beach. We moved to Florida for Sean’s job right when the pandemic was declared, and as soon as a dog-friendly state park opened we rushed there for sunrise. I still have the photos I took that morning of Scout’s paw prints in the sand. How exotic it felt! Her paws in the sand!!

It took a while for her to get comfortable on said sand—to not dart away from every wave, to not slink low to the ground beneath the breeze off the ocean. She will probably never love the beach as much as I do (I don’t really do astrology, but I have been told by several friends that this fits with me being a water sign 😜) but I like to think she also feels “at home” whenever we visit one. Recognizes the through line,

In many ways, we built the foundation of our life together on wet salty sand. You’d think that would be unstable, you know? But for all the erosion and rip currents and wind gusts, it’s actually a hell of an anchor.

Over the years I’ve learned (and keep learning) that social media often isn’t the way to alleviate loneliness. Many days...
26/10/2025

Over the years I’ve learned (and keep learning) that social media often isn’t the way to alleviate loneliness. Many days it is the most efficient path to exacerbate loneliness, actually.

But at times
.. rare shining stick-with-you times
.. this online community built around deep love of our dogs HAS been the door to feeling seen, heard, and valued. I will forever love experiencing that — even if it doesn’t feel like the norm, even if the hyperconsumption and constant advertising make me want to scream at my phone the way Scout used to lose her head at other dogs, even if even if even if.

Some of you were here in the very early days when I was overwhelmed with a “reactive” dog and caught up in training technicalities 24/7.

Some of you were here when we fostered our first shelter pup, proving that even though it wasn’t ideal, we had all grown enough to open our home in the way we’d wanted for so long (albeit temporarily).

Some of you were here when we moved into a bright yellow van after years of dreaming. When life got even bigger and I didn’t know how to share the huge spaces in between, anymore.

All of you are here now. I am still here, now. Very different — and with a very different dog, too, though still the same sweet soul at her core — living a very different life — but still always shouting into the void, whatever shape it takes, for connection.

Trying my damndest to see you the way I so desperately want you to see me.

If you’re able
 go play with your dog 💛

Something VERY COOL happened yesterday!!Two weeks after we were introduced over email, I got to meet E.B. Bartels—author...
01/08/2025

Something VERY COOL happened yesterday!!

Two weeks after we were introduced over email, I got to meet E.B. Bartels—author of “Good Grief: On Loving Pets, Here and Hereafter”—in person! đŸ„č Colleen Kinder (of and ) thought we might be kindred spirits, and wow wow was she right. E.B. is as lovely as I could have dreamed after reading some of her work. She *gets* life with a sensitive dog. And her book comes out in paperback this fall! (If you’ve got the means, preordering the paperback would be a wonderful way to support her.)

If you’ve been here for a while, you probably know that I LOVE thoughtful nonfiction about animals and continue to dream about publishing my own. This has been the year (particularly the summer) of better putting myself out there in the name of connection and community, and it feels surreal to proudly display a signed copy of a book—that I can say was written by a friend!!—on the van’s tiny bookshelf. Surreal in the best way.

“You know, the world is just full of wonderful people,” I told Sean when I got back yesterday, and I meant it, and it was such a lovely thing to be able to mean with my whole heart (especially given the horrors and hurt also in this world). If you’re able to, Scout and I encourage you to go play with your dog today to find some little lovely wonder of your own 💛

Here’s to more of these sorts of interactions, I hope, and less of the overwhelming divisive anger I have been all too f...
12/06/2025

Here’s to more of these sorts of interactions, I hope, and less of the overwhelming divisive anger I have been all too familiar with—have allowed myself be all too familiar with—over the years. 💛

Go play with your dog, if you’re able!

TL;DR: I love having so many memories to look back on. I love you for reading this (and anything else I’ve ever shared)....
20/05/2025

TL;DR: I love having so many memories to look back on. I love you for reading this (and anything else I’ve ever shared). I love you for being part of the good on social media. I love you for loving your dogs. Go play, if you’re able!! 💛

Lots of you know that early last year I took my first social media break since adopting Scout in 2019. After five years of posting on Instagram almost every single day, I dedicated a few months to drafting a book manuscript. Publishing a memoir-esque account of life with Scout—my thoughts and feelings on dog stuff finally organized in one coherent place—is my dream of all dreams.

That first draft document reached about 60k words... but it was a mess. Between the sense of chaos I felt every time I opened it and some shifts in my other work life (oh, the unpredictability of freelance budgets) I lost motivation. I kept setting goals to look at the manuscript, revise it, do SOMETHING, but the imposter syndrome weighed too much. I fiddled with social media and Substack and anything else I could use to distract myself from the fact that I was not moving closer to what I said I wanted most.

Well, when we got our short-term lease for the summer, I decided I needed to lean into the extra energy I’d have from not worrying about where to park our house or fill up with water or a million other van-life things. I set a word count goal. I created a brand-new draft document. I bought a paper calendar to hang above my desk where I could tangibly track my progress.

And it is going better than I hoped đŸ„č

Make no mistake, it’s still disorganized. I have so much work to do! But I am excited about that work. I am knee deep in memories of Scout, scrolling through old Instagram posts, rereading blogs, remembering feelings I hadn’t realized I’d forgotten, amazed all over again at everything life with this dog has been and still is.

Hopefully someday a literary agent sees something in our jumble, too. Until then, I’m already proud. And always hers.

And yours, too. I wouldn’t have dared think I could write a book about dogs if it weren’t for your voices over the years.

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Welcome to Paws and Reflect

Sharing in hopes to encourage other dog lovers. đŸș Scout (3?) Stray adopted Jan 2019 đŸ‘©đŸŒâ€đŸ’» Haley (23) Writer and dog nerd

Who are we?

We’re Haley and Scout, a 23-year-old writer turned obsessive dog nerd and a 3-year-old stray heeler turned girl’s best friend.

I adopted Scout in January 2019. Since then, we’ve navigated dog reactivity, apartment life, a big move from Wisconsin to Florida, and countless ups and downs in between.