Old Dog, New Tricks

I could begin this just about anywhere, but in having so many choices, I find it impossible to begin.

Perhaps it began as a young girl growing up in a mid-sized town, and choosing my first pet. A cat. Gray and white and black with an equally multi-colored nose.

Or perhaps it started years later when my father brought home a dog though not just any dog. A Saluki. He knew nothing about dogs, but this one was exotic so in my father's mind, the dog was important. At first, in deference to my cat, I rejected the dog, but soon, after slithering up on my bed, cautiously lying next to my snarling cat, I was as bonded to the dog as I was to my cat.

Or maybe it started years and years after that when I was in my mid-twenties and chose my own dog from the animal shelter, the dog that saved my life.

Or perhaps it was even the 10 years on a small farm with dogs and cats and birds and sheep and llamas.

Somehow, somewhere I realized I'd rather spend time with animals than most people. It's not an uncommon desire. Anyone who has loved a pet has contemplated the meaning of unconditional love. Anyone who has cuddled up with a cat or a dog or even a guinea pig has experienced that feeling that is impossible to describe though we still admirably try.

For me, the connection is not just love, but something more primal. It's sensual in that it incorporates not only sights and sounds, but smells and textures that cannot help but enliven the taste buds on some level. When cuddling with my current dog or years earlier burying my nose into the long neck of a dusty llama, I am forced out of my head and into my body -- a place where I do not spend nearly enough time.

So, it is no wonder, when my head hurts after a particularly cruel day of teaching children, I find myself hungry for an animal's companionship. Currently that companionship comes in the shape of a young dog who we've raised from a puppy. In the past the hunger made me race home from my classroom to muck out a sheep stall or curl up on the couch with purring cat or two.

It's probably no surprise then that my mid-life crisis comes not in the form of tattoos or expensive motorcycles, but in the desire to deepen that relationship with the animal world. Specifically, to deepen my relationship with dogs.

And despite my history with animals, I'm scared as hell to leave my 22 year career as a teacher and venture into the world of dog training. Talk about old dog and new tricks. This leap, while it feels both compelling and perfect on my levels still lifts me from my bed at night in a cold, panicked sweat.

There's so much to learn. There's so much I don't know I even need to learn. There's a level a fear I think one can only develop at 49 years old that as a 23 year old you weren't even capable of knowing existed.

Case in point: Recently, we've needed to hire a dog walker a few days a month. Through various connections we met Hannah, a 25 year old Divinity student who, on the side, began her own dog walking business. In her short life, Hannah has been a U.S. Marine working as a cryptologist and linguist, a corporate telecommunications specialist, and is currently enrolled in graduate school with the hope of becoming a hospital chaplain.

She's 25.

At 25 I was an underpaid bicycle mechanic earning my teaching certificate. I never contemplated owning my own business. I simply thought I wanted a job teaching and after my first tumultuous year as a teacher, I greatly doubted that choice.

Perhaps what separates the 25 year old Hannah and the formerly 25 year old me is that I lived my life in fear. Fear of failure, fear of doing the wrong thing because somehow I believed there was a right thing to do, fear of not really knowing what I wanted to do with my life, and fear of somehow living the words of caution my second grade teacher warned my parents about so many years ago: She struggles with completing projects.

On my good days, I tell myself this: 22 years of teaching IS completing a long project. While a talented teacher, I'm worn out and unlike many of my colleagues, I have the good sense to know that quitting teaching is best for everyone involved. Following a passion -- the desire to work with dogs, to work on my writing -- is what mid-life crises are all about. Some fulfill that crisis with a trip to Nepal or a cruise to Alaska or a stint in the Peace Corps or, as a recent psychologist friend informed me, an application to Doctors Without Borders. Others purchase things -- another house, a boat, and yes, the obligatory Harley Davidson motorcycle.

A mid-life crisis is not necessarily a crisis at all. I like to think of it more as an attempt to hone in on something you've put off for whatever the reasons. For me, the reasons were all based in fear.

Of course, this is what I tell myself on a good day.

On the bad days, well that's when I find it hard to begin dissecting how I ended up right here, right now...and old dog trying to learn a new trick.