Lessons From The Dog Park: How to Love What You Have and Let Go Of What You Don't
Haunted by the life you wish you were living? My dog can help.
I was at the dog park the other day.
This is a privilege (pretty much) reserved for pet owners.
Going to a dog park without a dog is like hanging around a playground without a child. It’s not illegal, but people will look at you funny.
For all you single souls, the dog park is also a way to meet eligible bachelors/bachelorettes.
ACTION STEP: Take your dog and wait for someone to show interest 🐾
When they ask how your day is going, tell them your husband/wife died ten years ago on this EXACT day, and it was their dying wish for you to go to the dog park and get on with your life. You’ll be fighting people off with a stick after a line like that.
Be careful because dogs also love sticks, so you’ll have to fight off the dogs with a second stick to protect the stick you’re fighting off people with.
SIDENOTE: I thought that was a funny introduction to this post, but my wife disagreed, and now I’m in the dog house, another dog-related thing, so that’s… something.
A dog diagnosed me with cancer
Not a dog doctor, sadly.
If you’ve seen the film Air Bud, you know dogs are multi-talented, and Golden Retrievers can play on championship-winning high school basketball teams.
However, medical school has proved extremely difficult for dogs to pass. I think it has to do with being unable to hold a clipboard.
That didn’t stop this dog from showing me I was on YOU’RE ABOUT TO BE F*CKED STREET, and I’d passed all the exits.
I was 20 and delivering mail a few weeks before Christmas when a dog chased me. A mailman and a dog — cliche, I know.
Turning heel and fleeing down the street (possibly shrieking like a 6-year-old girl, possibly not), I hightailed it up a fence where the dog couldn’t reach me (unless he was Air Bud, then he could have thrown basketballs at me).
It wasn’t a great look. More pressing, I was EXHAUSTED.
After a minor run and a quick scurry up a chain link fence, I felt like I’d just run a marathon. Pain crackled inside my head like lightning, and my chest heaved under the exertion as the dog wandered off - no doubt feeling embarrassed for me.
I pictured him laughing at my expense at the next neighbourhood dog meeting, those cruel canines chuckling at my idiocy and licking their own balls.
But I couldn’t waste time thinking about dog testicles (a motto I try to live by) because that pathetic attempt to outrun a pooch was a major catalyst for my visit to the doctor.
From there, the doctor listened to my story. He nodded sympathetically as a 20-year-old with no obvious cancer symptoms complained of tiredness and fatigue. Then sent me off for tests to put my mind at ease.
If this were an Air Bud sequel, I’d have been back and ready to help the team win a State Championship by the next morning. 🏆🏀
But life isn’t like the movies…
Health scares aren’t always comical mistakes (“We switched your scans with someone else; it turns out you’re NOT going through menopause”). You don’t dodge bullets and bump into your soulmate on the bus while your gay best friend fires off wisecracks. And you don’t always catch your breath when a dog drains it from you.
That same doctor called at 11 pm the next night and confirmed what the tests had immediately shown after my run-in with a dog.
I had Leukemia.
Long before I got cancer, I had a family dog
Well, my Dad had the dog, walked the dog, fed the dog, and paid the dog’s bills. I was just… there.
Now, I actually “have a dog.”
When I brought him home, I knew there’d be responsibilities, but I was ready to carry the load. I secretly hoped for a spike in Instagram content — but that was a secondary goal.
Instead, my dog refused to sleep on me when napping (he naps a lot), which is frustrating and also makes it very hard to get Instagram content.
I asked Google for reassurance, and an article with zero citations or reputable sources said that some dogs face away from their owner when sleeping as a form of protection.
That’s nice in theory.
In practice, he looks at me like I’m his loser stepdad, inviting him on a bike ride. I can sense him trying not to look at the outline of an underwhelming penis in my new bike shorts (metaphorically speaking), and the revulsion is palpable.
At first, my dog and I felt like housemates
Legally, I own him — even if the concept of “owning” something living is fraught with historical complexities. Maybe that’s part of the problem.
I thought we’d be best friends who lived together and possibly solved mysteries like Scooby-Doo and Shaggy.
It felt more like I’d moved in with someone I met on Craigslist because rent was expensive, and he was annoyed about sharing his space.
On the plus side, a pooch is like an invisibility cloak for questionable behaviours.
You can carry your own shit in a plastic bag, and no one will think you’re deranged because they’ll assume it’s your dog’s.
Good luck carrying a bag of fresh poop into a cafe without a dog. I guarantee some bleeding heart will tell you it’s “not hygienic” and make a scene.
It helps to know I’m not the only one feeling like things didn’t work out the way I hoped.
There are 926 million search results for ‘Why doesn’t my dog like me?’
Maybe I’m part of a generation of overly sensitive pet owners. Maybe dogs resent being given embarrassing names like Dijon Ketchup, Garlic Bread and Teleprompter.
Garlic Bread has a certain flair (claiming that for my firstborn, you can’t have it), but I don’t have all the answers.
I do know that I’m not the only one navigating the rocky path of expectation vs. reality.
90% of people regret rushing their job choice
31% of people regret marrying their spouse
44% of people with tattoos regret at least one of them
These figures will vary from one study to the next, and you can pull apart their accuracy if you want, but there’s no denying the underlying truth…
There’s something in your life that you wish had turned out differently.
Regret is corrosive — but knowing that doesn’t magically make it easy to process opportunities you’ve lost, roads you didn’t take, or decisions that didn’t turn out how you hoped.
It’s human to look back and feel like your life would be happier and better if only you’d made the right choices.
If any of that lands (and I think it does), here’s something for you to try.
Try this to avoid stepping in a steaming pile of regret 👇
A cool study published in Psychological Science found that people had more regret when they idealised the choices they didn’t make.
Most people overestimate the appeal of what could have happened by comparing their “ideal outcome” with what actually happened.
That’s like choosing between two job offers and realising you hate your new co-workers because they serve raisin cookies instead of chocolate chip cookies for employee birthdays.
Since you never knew what accepting the other job would have been like, regret can fester. For all you know, the job you didn’t take has chocolate chip cookies AND ice cream cake.
The more you think about this “What if” world, the worse you feel — despite having no proof it would have been better! The obvious problem with this mental approach is that it sets you up for failure.
In the words of someone much smarter than me:
“You can’t change a past decision, and focusing on regret will compromise your ability to make present decisions. Use a bad choice to learn how to be more effective in making future decisions.” — Iris Waichler.
It’s OK to wish you made other choices while still loving who you are
This is your reminder to go easy on yourself.
The next time you look back at a fork in the road, remember that your mind has a habit of assuming the “other” options would have been 10x better — and there’s simply no way of knowing if that’s true.
My dog and I aren’t solving mysteries in a minivan. But things have gotten better over the years. He still doesn’t nap facing me, but we have our moments, and life feels better when I focus on what I have, not what I assume could have been.
If you’re stuck in a “Damn, I wish I’d made the other choice” spiral (you know the type), remind yourself that you shape your experiences via your mindset.
It’s OK to wonder what might have been, but don’t assume it would be any better than what you have now. The best path isn’t one that’s perfect. It’s the path you’re OK walking, even if things are imperfect.
So don’t waste mental energy on a version of you that might have existed. If you want to change that bad, now is the perfect time to work on yourself.
The less you obsess over what could have been, the less regret you’ll feel, and the easier it will be to love who you are and focus on who you want to become.
See you at the dog park.
With love,
New World Porter
P.S. If you enjoyed this post, leave a like or comment with the button below (takes 0.46 seconds) so I can think terribly filthy thoughts about you.
Bianca (she’s mostly white furred), the 11 year-old whippet, no longer comes running when I invite her to chase the wild turkeys out of the yard. First, there must be salmon treats, then a few minutes of stretching, then, considerable review of the outside temperature, and finally, the quality and pitch of my begging her for a few fast gallops to scatter said turkeys. Any advice NWP????
I've always found it interesting that we humans tend to mourn the many losses of things, relationships, etc. that we never actually had in the first place. We're mourning the loss of what I like to call pre-memories that we've made up in our minds and when we don't get it or make a different decision the morning process begins. Damn that regret. We actually DO feel that we've lost something. What a dirty little trick our minds play on us. But the reality is that we were ALWAYS going to make that decision because that's exactly what we did. In the multiverse, one of ourselves actually did make that choice and got the thing, or picked the dog that sleeps facing you. But in THIS reality, exactly what happened is exactly what was always going to happen. But that's just my opinion 🙃 Thanks for the reminder that we all need to pump the brakes on wanting and START APPRECIATING. 💖