Paws and Reflect

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Paws and Reflect

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

05/02/2024

Finishing my Paws and Reflect book draft is officially at the top of my priority list (which means it needs to be ahead of Instagram). I’ve been circling around this for a while (too long) — thanks to some recent reading & conversations with Sean, it’s time to make a few more changes!

It’s not that I don’t still value this platform, or that I don’t LOVE connecting with you and your dogs. I do!! But I have never wanted to focus on something so much as I want to focus on writing this book. It’s been my dream… but I’m afraid I haven’t been giving it proper dream treatment.

I think scaling back on social media will help me save my capacity for deeper, long-form writing — and “store up” thoughts to fully contemplate (rather than halfway talking about a topic in a story share, meeting my initial impulse to address it, and then forgetting to spend greater time reflecting).

Sooo all this to say I’ll be spottier interacting here. (I’ve been cutting down my social media use since moving into the van, so maybe it won’t be that drastic of a change, but felt worth giving a heads up so as to not be a total ghost!). I do still have some drafted posts I want to share and am sure other tidbits will come up as time goes on, so I’ll definitely still be online from time to time. Just trying to be increasingly intentional about how much of my day is spent looking at my phone when there is so much else to do.

Thank you thank you thank you for talking dogs and life with me. And for loving Scout.

Now go play with your dog if you’re able!!

03/02/2024

What Scout perceives… versus what I perceive

Sometimes I have it in my head that something should go a certain way, but the dog in front of me feels differently.

Like, I assume a certain situation shouldn’t be a big deal compared to all the other things we’ve accomplished together. Or vice versa, I assume it *should* be a big deal. But then when I actually pay attention to Scout’s behavior & body language I might realize she’s experiencing it totally differently — feeling something I didn’t expect.

Just because I understand that a new dog won’t try to get in her face doesn’t mean she knows it. Just because I realize the loud sound we’re hearing is the neighbor’s new harmless thingamajig doesn’t mean she does. Just because I conceptualize a novel park as very similar to other ones we’ve visited doesn’t mean it feels the same to her. Etc etc etc.

Living with a dog is a constant exercise in empathy, I think, if we let it be. And that’s been a really lovely thing 💛

31/01/2024

Taking Scout on adventures is one of my favorite things. I’m so thankful we get to enjoy this great big world together — but we don’t bring our heeler *every* place we go.

It’s important to respect the space we’re in, consider our current mental + physical capacities, and ask what the result of a given outing would be. (Tons of fun? a bit of discomfort that would make life better in the long run? or just not worth it?)

I don’t bring out this flowchart for every single decision since it’s often an intuitive process. But thinking about these questions has been really helpful when I’m struggling to decide if Scout should tag along or not!

A brief overview of my thoughts on “everywhere dogs” over time:

• My goal used to be to have an everywhere dog because it felt like that’s how I could “prove” I was a good enough owner and that Scout was a good dog. Now my biggest focus is on creating the life that is most fulfilling for us both as a team, whatever that looks like.

• There are plenty of mildly uncomfortable situations where Scout’s joy at spending time with her humans outweighs any negativity. There are also environments, though, where she would truly prefer to just stay in the van.

• We absolutely push her limits sometimes in the name of growth (and because every relationship has some give and take!) but on the whole I want to spend our time together in ways we both love.

• Some environments are just a straight no-go for us. Others depend on our mood and if we want a challenge. There’s nothing wrong with making different decisions in different moments.

• Just because we “can” doesn’t mean we “should”.

Does your dog enjoy being out and about with you in public? How do you decide whether to bring them along?

30/01/2024

When Sean was looking for new jobs in our second year of dating (before we ever lived together) and evaluating places he could move, I said I’d be happy to go just about anywhere with him — except that I didn’t really see myself “living in like, Florida”.

Joke was on me, huh? 😂

We spent three years in the sunshine state from spring 2020 to early 2023 when we hit the road in Hermes the van.

While we’ll always be Wisconsinites at heart, I think — our bright childhood days and long college nights imprinted deeply — I’m surprised at how right it feels to be back in Florida for a while.

There are obvious issues, of course, especially politically. And if you don’t like swamps. (I never felt more like Shrek than in the years we spent on the space coast.)

But traveling around so much in the past 12 months has made me more confident than ever that I LOVE the beach. Possibly more than any other landscape, and I say that as someone who hiked mountains in Alaska and marveled over red rock formations out west. Plus my surgery-recovering dry eyes are thrilled about the humidity. And it’s easy to feel cooped up in the van when it’s cold outside — we were way less active in December and the first part of January — so waking up to 50+ degrees and the ability to comfortably lift weights outside is delightful 😍

Scout, for her part, seems to easily remember how to be a Florida dog. There are lizards to chase and shorebirds to stalk and sunbeams to sleep in and familiar patios to visit.

Here’s to nostalgia. And having as many homes as feels right.

28/01/2024

The other day I found myself making a “Scout training timeline” — basically just a big list of roughly when, and loosely in what order, I taught her different things.

I’m sure I’m not remembering everything perfectly. But it satisfied my itch to reminisce and that was the goal!

I initially got interested in dog training, way back before Scout with my family’s husky, because of ego. Genuine curiosity, too — I loved dogs, I wanted to do cool things with them! — but quite a bit of desire to feel “good enough” and get some validation from a community I looked up to.

Then I got deeper into dog training with Scout out of necessity. We were not living a mutually enjoyable life together at first (as much as I wanted to feel like we were). She was really struggling with her fear reactivity… and *I* was really struggling with my human end of things.

So once we reached a point where our shared day-in and day-out was pretty good? Well, it makes perfect sense to me that the list of “new commands / cues / skills we learned each year” dwindled and dwindled to where 2023 was a great big “nothing we hadn’t done before”.

It’s not that we don’t still enjoy training together. (I stand by the belief that every interaction with our dogs is training, technically, or rather that living together is synonymous with learning together.) And it’s not that we’ve stopped growing completely. (That would be a sad day!)

But I think maybe I was a bit fatigued of some of the nitty-gritty technical training stuff after it occupying so much space, physical and mental, for so long? And I also realized that my biggest interests are a bit broader. I love watching trick videos and cheering for our friends in dog sports, for example — but for me personally those things aren’t compelling goals. I want to read about social species overall and nerd out over theory and most importantly just move seamlessly through my days with this delightful dog.

Here’s to looking back, and looking forward, and embracing that every dog/owner/lifestyle can look different, and loving what we’ve done together — what we still do together — even as things change over time 💛

27/01/2024

Happy anniversary to Hermes the yellow home on wheels! 🎉

Yesterday marked one year of full-time van life. And we are not tired of it at all!

You can plan ahead and do your best to prepare… but sometimes the real test is just “doing the thing” and seeing how it feels. I am over the moon that we guessed correctly when we figured living on the road would be a good fit for all three of us.

Here’s to never “settling down” 😉

(And a huge thanks to for taking this photo of us last fall. It’s perfect.)

17/01/2024

“And how should we behave during this Apocalypse? We should be unusually kind to one another, certainly. But we should also stop being so serious. Jokes help a lot. And get a dog, if you don’t already have one.”
— Kurt Vonnegut, Armageddon in Retrospect

I am actually not a believer that everyone should have a dog BUT still found this passage touching. And love that Sean captured me and my girl doing what we might do best.

💛

15/01/2024

I was a tracking fiend last year 📊👩🏼‍💻

Over the summer I converted my haphazard list of spots we’ve parked the van into a detailed spreadsheet (which can easily be uploaded to Google My Maps so I can zoom out to see where we’ve been).

The data visualization bug hit me hard after that — a few weeks later I got excited to turn my 2023 reading log into a more detailed table, then I figured I might as well update Scout’s medical history document, and I added a comprehensive “van maintenance” tab to our overnight stay spreadsheet too.

Tracking things has been a mixed bag for me in the past. I have a tendency to get obsessive in ways that aren’t always healthy. But it’s also SO satisfying — and motivating! — to see everything laid out.

I’ve learned that I just need to be thoughtful about what I decide to track in the first place and self-aware enough to notice early if I’m getting too fixated on a specific metric.

I especially love being able to easily calculate percents and averages from spreadsheets. It’s interesting to see how often we sleep on remote public land vs in chain store parking lots, for example, or how often I give books five stars.

Are you a tracker? What are your favorite ways to log things?

10/01/2024

Sometimes you just have to build a snowman sitting on top of a snowman ☃️

One of my favorite things about Sean (that has been heavily encouraged by Scout’s presence in our lives) is feeling like silliness is always on the table. After he finished a work meeting yesterday I announced that we should go play in the snow and then make hot chocolate… so we did just that.

I think we’re all ready for some warmer weather (and to be on the road just the three of us again, back to our normal) but it’s been wonderful to see loved ones AND get some childhood-nostalgia-fueled winter time!

(Spot Scout’s in the background… something to tug with is never far out of reach if she has anything to say about it 😂)

09/01/2024

When we were at my parents’ last week, Scout and my family’s husky Snort got into a small scuffle.

Everyone is okay! No physical harm. There doesn’t seem to be much mental fallout either.

But it was hard.

I talked with a few friends but didn’t feel like sharing publicly right away. Usually I enjoy processing stuff here, but sometimes the reality is that we need our own room to work through things. And that’s authentic too.

This was the first time Scout and Snort have come into direct contact except when they briefly met each other at the shelter before I adopted Scout (pre dog attack that turned her nervousness into full-blown fear reactivity).

They’re both delightful creatures, but their particular brands of weirdness are not compatible. Snort can be intense and has had scuffles in the past. Scout is timid and awkward. While they’ve gone on plenty of neutral walks together, interaction has never been a priority (in part because they’re also my two favorite dogs in the entire world and I knew any fight between them would wreck me emotionally).

After years of very successful family visits, we had a miscommunication where my dad came outside with Snort while Scout was with us in the yard. It happened quickly and I didn’t have a great view, but the short of it was that they ran up to each other, there was some growling and barking, Sean called Scout away, and then I cried super hard.

I am SO happy with Scout’s training progress — how far we’ve come as a team, the things we get to do together — and in the immediate aftermath I was overwhelmed worrying it would be undone. Earlier in our journey a single off-leash dog incident could shake our confidence for months. And yeah, I know we’re more resilient now, but try telling my heart (and stomach) that when I’m still full of adrenaline.

So I wallowed for the evening. The next morning we walked the dogs together to try to reset. Snort wasn’t affected at all; Scout was more nervous than usual but way better than I thought. Then we threw ourselves into time with friends in our old college town.

More thoughts to put together at some point, but for now: Stuff happens. Life is messy. We get through it.

06/01/2024

Our house, (parked) in the middle of the street 🎵

It’s always special to bring Scout back to Madison. We lived here when I first adopted her — Sean a senior at UW, me freshly graduated, Scout unsure about her new life, none of us realizing how close of a family we’d become.

We built our training foundation on these sidewalks.

It’s kind of magical to walk them together nearly five years later. (In no small part because Scout now has loose-leash skills and is confident enough to explore, sniff, and pass other dogs without trouble, phew!)

So much comes back to me each time we’re in our favorite city. Memories of first meeting Sean through friends years before we started dating (even more years before I knew Scout existed). Long loud fun nights with some groundbreaking people who made me feel really loved. Sad hard stressful ones, too. Building a snowman in front of my college house and sledding on stolen lunch trays. Trying to figure out who I was!

Seeing Scout at my hometown’s shelter on a family Christmas visit. Walking her up to my apartment building for the first time, heart breaking at her cower and full hackles. Our first hike. The first time she reacted at another dog. Having no idea how to play with her. Wanting so badly for Sean to turn into a dog person and love her like I did.

All these moments, big and small, are tied so deeply to this place. They, and it, helped make me who I am.

They, and it, still do.

And it’s even better to visit at this point in our lives — with our van, with more confidence, with older-but-somehow-fresher eyes. Always Badgers, always Forward ❤️

04/01/2024

What does it mean if your dog “does well” with something?

My personal definition is that Scout both 1) behaves in a way I like and 2) feels pretty comfortable in a given situation. (It’s possible to have one of those without the other.)

If she shut down when we filed her nails, for example, I wouldn’t say she did well even if her physical stillness appeared nice from the outside. Same if she walks in heel but is visibly anxious scanning the environment more than usual. Or if she doesn’t “react” to another dog with vocalizations but is really tense. And so on.

I’ve had some moments recently where I’ve realized how different my connotations can be from others’. Like, when I come inside and tell Sean “Scout did not do well seeing the neighbor’s dogs at the end of the yard” he knows what I mean: She was more scared than I’d like her to be. But a stranger listening in might have visions of her barking or lunging or something more extreme. When I say “she didn’t do well alone in the van longer than usual” I mean she was a bit amped up when I came back. But someone else might hear that as “she was whining” or “she destroyed something inside”. You get the gist.

Point is: We all have different personal standards — plus different ways of using the same words!

And it can be so helpful to define terms in conversations or give/ask for a little more detail, especially if we feel prone to the comparison game (and the insecurity it sometimes causes) 💛

30/12/2023

Sometimes I feel like I’ve done so much reflecting on life with Scout that there’s nothing new to say.

Then I remember the value in retracing old footsteps. Feeling how the grooves have changed just a bit. Catching ideas in slightly different lighting.

A lot of my “core beliefs” about dog training have been solid for years now. It’s hard to imagine drastically changing my take on fulfillment, having our companions’ backs, the importance of play, or critical thought overall.

But there IS always always always something fresh to consider, some nuance to add, some conversation to enjoy.

And I can forget that even if I’ve said something before, chances are it’s buried in deep in years of writing — some posts much more focused & thoughtful than others — and if the idea keeps coming up? Then hey it probably *is* worth reiterating! 😉

All this to say that Paws and Reflect seems to look different every year, but my place to ramble about life with dogs is certainly not going away any time soon. Thanks for being part of it. 💛

30/12/2023

It is impossible to narrow down our favorite adventures this year — something I realize we are so so so lucky to be able to say — but here are a few memories where I 1) actually took a photo and 2) felt capital-A Alive with Scout and Sean.

1) Our first van life snow in Nebraska ❄️
2) Dispersed camping in Utah 🏜️
3) Sunrise at Coral Pink Sand Dunes ⛅️
4) First light along the Grand Canyon 🐦‍⬛
5) Open air sunset in New Mexico 🌵
6) The best kind of “feeling blue” in Alaska 🏔️
7) Reading about birds in Banff National Park 🌊
8) Space to ourselves in Wyoming 🌻
9) Camping at my childhood spot 🚐
10) Conquering NYC 🏙️

(Note that this post is absolutely a highlight reel — I can also recount many times we felt capital-S Stressed instead 😂 but the end of the year makes me sappy.)

28/12/2023

If you’ve ever…

• Raised your voice at a friend bothering you
• Warned your sibling to stop poking or teasing you
• Vocalized when surprised by touch you weren’t expecting
• Said “ouch” or “hey!” when someone bumped, stepped on, or otherwise hurt you
• Reacted in dozens of similar ways to discomfort

Then you can understand why a dog might growl. And why — considering the context, lifestyle, and relationships at hand of course — it not always a capital-B Big deal.

Sincerely,
I Accidentally Stepped on Scout’s Tail and She Yelp-Growled Before Looking to Reconcile, Which Was a Perfectly Valid Reaction

26/12/2023

Scout is a sweet (albeit awkward) creature across the board. If you’ve been around her, you’ve seen it… but probably not like Sean and I have. She’s a slow burn.

And it is such an honor to get her *sweetest* moments. The ones that come with full trust, that speak of sure safety, that inspire big boldness. The ones that still make me tear up a little.

I feel this sentiment all over again every time we’re around friends and family. She’s an easy neutral dog, able to coexist with anyone who doesn’t smother her, but she seeks *us* out vehemently. And I melt always.

💛

20/12/2023

House call vet reflections: I don’t think we’ll be heading back to a traditional clinic waiting room any time soon!

Scout’s not a fan of being poked and prodded. Her annual exam back in 2020 went well — I was so proud of her change in confidence from the previous year when we’d first adopted her — but then she started having seizures. Her epilepsy resulted in a few capital-S Stressful emergency visits plus lots of bloodwork that set us back... not to mention 1) she was already timid by default in unfamiliar environments and 2) there were other dogs in an often-tight space.

So the vet quickly became a source of anxiety for both of us.

While we developed a nice plan — last year’s annual in Florida was no big deal — I wanted to see if we could optimize further when we moved into the van. Then I read The Other Family Doctor by Karen Fine and it confirmed that I wanted to try a house call approach.

I was not disappointed!

We chose a vet in my hometown since we visit family here pretty regularly:

• Scout, Sean, and I played outside in my parents’ yard just before they arrived. We did the exam inside the vet’s converted RV parked in the driveway. Enough room to maneuver but free of distractions! (They’d also have come inside if that was better for us.)

• I’ve never felt so heard, respected, and trusted by an animal professional. We got to restrain Scout and give her oral vaccine ourselves since she’ll accept all handling from me and Sean (but gets more stressed around strangers she has no rapport with).

• I turned into the 🥹 emoji when our new vet repeatedly said “I can tell you’re really in tune with her” because goshdarnit my attention to & advocacy for Scout is one of the things I’m most proud of. And that validation was really lovely.

• Although Scout likes the car, it was nice to be able to play in an environment she knows well immediately after the exam without any travel required. I think it helped her recovery time.

All in all feeling really lucky this option was available to us. And thankful this cattle dog is still healthy (albeit showing her age more and more).

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Welcome to Paws and Reflect

Sharing in hopes to encourage other dog lovers. 🐺 Scout (3?) Stray adopted Jan 2019 👩🏼‍💻 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.

We’re passionate about:

Being responsible, respectful species ambassadors

Supporting reputable rescues and breeders

Embracing emotions and growth

Understanding that each dog is an individual

Asking why we set certain goals

And more

Above all, we care about living a good life together.

A life we both enjoy deeply, freely, and with as much harmony as possible.

I write about our experiences in the hope that our blunders and realizations can encourage other human-dog duos. We’re no experts, but we love sharing our journey to connect with other owners.

Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you have questions — and check out our suggested reading for a good place to start!

05/02/2024

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Welcome to Paws and Reflect

Who are we?

We’re passionate about:

Above all, we care about living a good life together.