Pooches: On Dogs, Walking Anxiety & Happiness

 While we were on vacation last week, I was able to catch up on some ‘beach-reads’. One book that still has me thinking is The Happiness Project. This book follows the author’s journey as she tries to live a happier, less stress-free life. The premise is simple: she tries to spend more time doing things that make her happy, while trying to change the things that make her unhappy.

The funny thing is, when I identified what made me happy and what made me unhappy, it was the same: the pooches.
One of my favorite things is to go for walks and explore Chicago with the pooches. I love taking them to parks and festivals, and I love dog training and showing how well-trained they can be.
At the same time, one of my most stressful things is our daily walks where I need to walk both dogs at the same time and anticipating everything that can go wrong on our walks. With as many as 30 dogs living on a single city block, we’re always encountering other dogs barking and lunging on retractable leashes, off-leash dogs charging and challenging our dogs, and trying to control our pooches if this makes them excited enough to jump or try to play on leash.

I realized the anxiety of what could go wrong has started to make me an angry person. I am often glaring at other people as they walk their dogs towards us–much to my embarrassment, one day I even realized I was giving dirty looks to a former friend of mine I hadn’t seen in a  long time and just wanted to meet the dogs.

So in recognizing this, I’m trying to think of ways to turn this around and continue having fun on the walks. Maybe I just need to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and just hope that other dog owners are acting responsibly and deal with something bad only if it happens? Or maybe I need to change and do even more training with the pooches so they don’t react as strongly if other dogs bark and lunge at them? Or is my worry actually a safeguard for the pooches where acting more casually could be dangerous? How does everyone else balance walking safety without becoming an angry, bitter person?

Update: Last night we announced on our Facebook page the names of the special pups saved in Shy/Khloe’s memory. Introducing….Zoey (girl with mange) and Bella (girl with broken leg). Zoey will be up for adoption soon; Bella is still getting some work done on her leg. We’ll continue posting real-time updates and photos on our Facebook page.