Self-Protection versus Crating

Not all dogs need to be crated to feel safe when they're alone.

Catherine the Great—our dog, dog of my heart—protects herself. She doesn't need crating to feel safe; she would just resource-guard her beds.

She was rescued by her previous guardians at three. (How they gave us both the gift of honoring the stronger bond she and I have is another story.) She's fine defending herself. She's reactive, and she used to be about protecting her bed. She must be used to protecting herself—or trying

.

But a few months ago, something changed. She let me start petting her in her bed, even when she just woke up, and sit with her on her bed.

Things changed even more a week ago: She wanted me to pet her last thing at night, sometimes to sleep.

This was the position she got in, and was in just after midnight this morning, right before I got up to go to sleep.

This is our bond.

(A very short memoir photoessay about a very important nonhuman person in my life. I started something, I made mistakes, typos (that I fixed, some after posting), and, I finished it,: the 2 Rules of Writing, from the excellent namesake Facebook group. Speaking of freeing restrictions and safety: I do some of my best writing on my phone, often on FB, with its awful virtual keyboard, without even using voice transcription. Like this.)

(The metatextual commentary, very much in character for someone who tried to write an explicitly hypertext honors baccalaureate thesis… in 1994.)

(Written on Facebook, turned into a blog post, and published, all in about twenty minutes. Creativity, good for depression. Who knew?)