Trouble, My Very First Dog

Before Waffle and Tug, there was Trouble, our family’s first Bernese Mountain Dog. This is her story.

I’ve been up since four am, but the anxiety has been swirling within me since far before then. 

What if I don’t honor Waffle, you or our story with my words? You all showed up for me – here – in a newsletter and none of the words I’ve been writing for the past few weeks seem right. How can I be sure that what I write here, for you, is worthy of reading? And holy hell, how am I going to make it through today without more sleep? 

The more I asked myself to make peace with the anxiety, the further and faster it spiraled. 

I finally got out of bed at 5 to face the demons of my mind. After all, as I told you last week – and I tell myself daily – the only way out is through.

The only way out is through.

So through – together – we go.

But, before we get to Waffle and her miraculous nose and floof bombs and all the adventures thereafter, to truly understand our story, we must start at the beginning: when I first fell in love with dogs.

So, with love and dork and without further ado,

Trouble, My Very First Dog 

Before Waffle and Tug, before Therapy Dog Thursday in the psychiatric ward, before our family’s dogs Sadie and Sophie, and before my tutor’s sheepdog Benjamin, there was Trouble, our family’s first Bernese Mountain Dog. 

She joined our family when I was five years old and if there was one thing for certain - she lived up to her name. She was wild, in every sense of the word, but when I was with her, I was finally free.

I didn’t belong in most places as a kid. I grew up with an undiagnosed anxiety disorder but it didn’t present in the typical shy and demure way that it often does. Instead, my anxiety presented the exact opposite of that. I was terrified and So – Damn – Loud about it in all the ways.  Instead of shrinking in fear like most do, I grew with it. It was a phenomenon psychiatry had not yet accepted when I was a kid and thus, it was a presentation of anxiety that absolutely no one empathized with. Loud, boisterous, emotional and endlessly hyper, few tolerated my dynamo ways. I was seemingly forever and always ‘too much’ for people and the world.

But, I made sense to Trouble. I made sense with Trouble. 

Sprinting through the woods of Vermont, dancing in dizzying twirls to The Supremes, playing dress up until my closet was a pile of vibrant chaos on the floor, we were inseparable. A tireless tornado, we left wreckage in our wake wherever we went. There were many consequences, of course  – time outs daily, canceled play dates, additional chores - but that didn’t slow us down one bit. We lived by our pact. Do it together and always, always, always, be exactly as you are. 

It drove my parents absolutely nuts. On top of that, Trouble had this knack for jumping up on my back and tearing my dresses all the way down the back of them, splitting the fabric clean in two. At the beginning, my mom tried to fix each tear but she finally gave up on mending them so they looked nice. She’d just sew in some random piece of fabric at the back and I’d carry on - running, yelling, twirling, dancing, expressing myself. A girl with her brain on fire forever accompanied by her fluffy sidekick.

To the world, we were a hurricane. But to me, we were magic. To me, we were home.

When I started first grade, my colorful personality and notable zest for being became even more apparent. If I had grown up now, I would have been labeled neurodivergent on day one and been paired with an education assistant and therapist immediately.  But, when I was kid, they just called me weird, dumb and worst of all, broken. 

That’s when the accidents started. The bullies would jeer or my teacher would call on me when I wasn’t sure of the answer and I’d just shit myself. Right there. In that exact moment. Fear has a fascinating hold on the body. Fight, Flight or Freeze. I lived them all as a child and unfortunately, my freeze had the biological reality of defecation attached to it. 

I remember the shame of the accidents and then the fear of them. I started bringing extra clothes to school within a month of first grade starting. It just became my normal to bring spare clothes even though my classmates made merciless fun of me for my massive backpack and my need to have a teacher join me in the bathroom sometimes.

My peers were cruel and school quickly became my least favorite place. Additionally, I had a learning disability so the schoolwork was no salvation either. It was only another reminder of my differences – another reminder of my perpetual unbelonging.

But then, there was Trouble. She quickly became my only safe place. My whole day was spent waiting to see her. I’d walk the mile and a half walk home from the bus with a beaming smile. We had an electric fence back then, and she would sit there at the edge of it, jumping in excitement, her tail wagging hurriedly. I always ran that last stretch of our steep driveway to get to her – and then we were off – bounding, leaping, singing, dancing the hurt away before ending in a heap of snuggles and slobbery kisses on the lawn. Everything she did made it clear. She loved the all of me, exactly as I was, no matter how many accidents I had or breakdowns I had cried through that day.

I didn’t have the words for what she meant to me back then. I couldn’t read or write fully until I was in second grade, after all. But, I did know that she made everything better. I did know that when I came home to Trouble, I was no longer alone, defenseless, or different.

I was just me with Trouble. I could be just me with Trouble and when I lay on the floor at the end of the day and she put a hugging paw around me, the tears would finally fall. But even as they did, for that one single moment, I was absolutely okay. Yes, for that one single moment and every other moment, she was by my side, I was absolutely okay because I knew that I was loved and enough, however and whoever I was or might one day become.