What advocating for my dog looked like this holiday season
We left Wisconsin a week ago. For the past two months — the longest we’ve stayed in a single state since moving into our van — we bounced between family and friends,
Our time with loved ones was incredible. But traveling with a sensitive dog always requires a bit of extra forethought (and during-thought and afterthought, for good measure).
Here’s how we advocated for Scout around other dogs, a bunch of people, and some novel environments!
Background context: Why do we have to advocate for Scout while visiting family?
You can read more about my take on advocating for our dogs overall in this piece.
The short answer: Because all dogs deserve advocacy!
The long answer: Because Scout, while an incredible dog with more resiliency than ever, can still be a sensitive scaredy creature who desperately needs us to have her back. I’ve seen her be deeply affected by single negative experiences before. I’ve made the mistake of saying “oh it’ll all be fine” only to feel like the worst owner ever a few moments later. My commitment to her — quirks and all — is that when I ask her to handle challenges for my benefit… I’ll do whatever I can to make them easier on her.
First: We worked hard to biologically fulfill our dog!
You can read more about my commitment to biological fulfillment overall in this article.
Part of having Scout’s back? Making sure she’s got the capacity in the first place to handle the situations we put her in!
Play is our cattle dog’s biggest stress reliever and greatest source of fulfillment. Not every day involved marathon tug-of-war sessions — and some of them were downright lazy either due to the cold or just our busy schedule spending time with other people — but we did our best to make sure that, on the average, Scout was satisfied the whole time we were in Wisconsin.
This helped her relax in the dull moments and recover more quickly when that state of calm was broken (by a neighbor’s barking dog, or her annual vet visit, or any of the other large number of unnerving stimuli that crop up in suburbia).
We gave Scout plenty of quiet time to rest and decompress
You can read more about the logistics of leaving Scout alone in our van here and why it’s sometimes best to leave her behind here.
Speaking of relaxation: Scout spent a lot of time on her own in Hermes, maybe with a little cozy Christmas jazz (my favorite winter Spotify playlist) coming through the speakers, either napping in the bed or up in one of the front cab chairs.
This was for a few reasons.
First, while the distinction between “introvert” and “extrovert” is not as black-and-white as some people present — and I’m sure there are folks out there who would say applying the terms to canines is silly anthropomorphism — I am convinced that Scout is an introvert. She’s socially similar to me and Sean. The three of us would like to be together as much as physically possible… but we’re easily drained around too much external commotion. Asking our cattle dog to navigate all of our friend and family visits in step with us would be a pretty terrible Christmas present.
Scout loves her van home! Hermes is her house. While she’s more environmentally stable than ever, she can still feel nervous in brand new places. Taking her back to her own comfortable, familiar space was the perfect solution.
Dogs also need significantly more sleep than we people do. (And I was not even getting enough rest for me as a human during the bulk of our holiday visit stretch.)
Sometimes the best form of advocacy is simply not asking Scout to join us somewhere.
Scout and my family’s dogs didn’t directly interact
You can read more about why I’m risk averse with family dog-dog interactions here.
“Why doesn’t Scout interact with your parents’ dogs?” is the most common question every time we visit my hometown. I’ll share them coexisting, playing with us in the same space, going on neutral walks — we had a lot of outdoor fun at the start of this mild winter! — but never actually engaging with each other.
For us personally, direct interaction isn’t a priority. We don’t visit all that often (so it’s not super inconvenient for the dogs to be separated nor worthwhile to try to push them), the focus of our visits is to spend time fully present with loved ones (read: not managing the dogs the whole time), and I’m thrilled with Scout’s training progress (and don’t want to risk a setback). One way I advocate for Scout is by enforcing simple boundaries like this!
Unfortunately, we did have a slip up just before New Year’s Eve. My dad came outside with my family’s husky while we were out with Scout. They briefly made (noisy, growly) contact before we called Scout away. Thankfully no one got hurt, and when we reset with a neutral walk right away the next morning both dogs seemed pretty relaxed.
Advocating for our dogs is an imperfect process even when we think we’ve had a lot of practice honing the skill.
We didn’t let my toddler niece approach our dog
You can read more about managing Scout around Olive in this older piece. It was written when my niece was an infant, but the sentiments still apply!
I love my niece as much as I love my dog. (Let me tell you, that says something!)
Scout has never had issues with children — she used to go to a morning workout class with me back in Florida that was created for moms and often had dozens of toddlers running around — but she’d rather they don’t touch her. Our heeler can feel especially nervous if she’s “trapped” in one place (under a command, on a leash, in a corner, otherwise frozen because she’s uncertain of what she’s supposed to do).
Because of this, I’ve opted for Scout and Olive to just not directly interact at this age. “Timid dog” plus “toddler who is too young to fully understand respecting other creatures” equals a potential mishap that, while probably wouldn’t be a capital-B Big Deal in the grand scheme of things (I don’t think Scout is a bite risk, for example), I’d rather avoid entirely.
So whenever Scout was hanging out with us humans, she was separated from Olive in some way and could approach — or not — on her own terms. Most often this meant one of us just held the baby.
The highlight of this visit was getting to play tug with my cattle dog with one hand while pulling my niece’s sled in the other. And during the first magical snowfall, to boot Olive was perfectly bundled up in her cold-weather clothes to be unable to startle Scout with a quick grab, and our heeler for her part, did not seem to care about the tiny human at all.
We gave loved ones directions for interacting with her
Scout knows most of the people we love, and she likes them too. But she isn’t a fan of continuous affection from anyone who isn’t me or Sean — and as she’s gotten older, her petting preferences have become more reserved.
We advocated for her by instructing most friends and family to just ignore her. (Scout’s favorite way to hang out with someone is to sniff them for approximately two seconds and then act like they aren’t there.) When she did want to be pet, we told folks to take frequent breaks so she could move away if she wanted without feeling trapped. This worked perfectly on several group walks!
