JANUARY 4, 2023

We’ve been at this 5 years, and many of you have been following and supporting my foster journey since I started this page and have become very much like a family.

The easy thing to do on the occasion of a new year would be to wish y’all a happy one and blow right past what was really happening in Crazy Town last year.

But I’m not going to do that.

The story of 2022, fam, was just as much about rescuing me.

…………………………………………..

Now that it’s over, I’m inclined to think 2022 offered me more opportunities for growth than any year prior, but maybe the difference is that I just took more of them, because, full disclosure, I didn’t have a choice. I spent the year miles away from my comfort zone and pitched a dinky tent in an unfamiliar place — one that seeks to add me to the list of beings I love, care about, and protect. It’s foreign.

The beginning of the year found Crazy Town without a single foster in care, my dad having his bladder removed and coming home 11 days later with an ostomy to manage, a long course of chemo for which we would travel to Richmond, unrecognized anxiety, and newfound, erroneous opinions about the science of medicine that both made me question his cognitive function and want to restrict his privileges to his own stoma.

Dad wasn’t my only patient. Rio’s body was beginning to fail, but I hardly had time to notice it wasn’t just another dip in his ongoing tumultuous health story because I played the role of “Girl Friday” and caregiver for work, for play, for anyone who needed it, until the light inside my soul burned out. I assumed responsibility and accountability for problems that weren’t ever mine to solve; burdens I never should have carried, and I lost myself in staunch devotion to the well-being of everyone else in my orbit.

I spent some of the year in shame about my lacking boundaries; living my whole life helping others reach their goals, but never having time, space, or energy for my own.

Serendipitously, just prior to Rio’s death we welcomed two bottle babies, Beck and Brook I named them later, and several weeks postmortem, I met Jax, a mischievous husky, who I suspected early on had come to teach me some “big stuff.”

As a former child who communicated in “behaviors” and grew up to identify with them, I invested copious amounts of adult time coming to terms with my younger self, and it was in 2022 we became friends. I guess I saw a little bit of Crabby Appleton (childhood nickname) in Jax and felt like we had something to prove to the world, but the husky assured me we did not.

Jax has never doubted himself nor second guessed his instincts. He wouldn’t dream of questioning the validity of a life dedicated to self preservation. And while he strongly believes he should be awarded way more treats even though he breaks my rules sometimes, he is kind, gentle, and respectful to every dog he meets. He helps me when I ask; he moderates in playgroups, he de-escalates and is an exceptional role model for little babies and timid dogs alike. He loves kids and he “back talks” when I ask for a down at treat time, but I find his ‘tude hilariously enchanting.

Scared dogs meet Jax first because he welcomes and accepts all of them regardless of their social IQ, and if they’re fearful, he gives them space to warm up. I would not trust him with a brick of cheese on the counter, but he’s as much my leader as I am his.

Jax is more wild than any other dog I’ve met, and we spend a lot of time on the leash, in nature, which is where I learned to listen. Walking beneath those trees I realized that I too am a piece of our natural world, and if Jax is driven by the instinct to fulfill his needs, then I should give my own a moment in the light, if only to discover what they might be.

I am forever changed because of my husky, and every dog since he came into my life met a different version of me than all the ones who came before. Lenny and Ellen know a kinder, more competent and respectable mom and have benefited from what Jax has taught me.

If I had to pick a word to describe how I felt in 2022, it would be …uncomfortable. I’ve been asking questions for 38 years, and came to know that some of the answers are hard to swallow, unpalatable, but unable to be forgotten. And some of them set us free.

The mountain of personal discovery is unkempt, and the hiker is tasked with making her own way. It’s a journey of an individual that empowers in one moment and pains the next. The climb doesn’t go directly up, either, but the ascent is necessarily brutal and every win is hard-fought. Sometimes it seems easier to abort and go back, closer to the comfort of the known, but further from the destination. And that’s why I erected my crappy little tent on the mountain and stayed.

It’s not about finding the top or getting there fast, I learned, because there is no finish line to speak of, nor any external competition. But there are summits on that mountain. Lookouts with views I couldn’t see before. Clarity. Peace.

But the internal discomfort lingers like a

dog fart in a hot car. It’s hiking with a wedgie, okay. An atomic wedgie, and after a while it becomes the way of things.

I guess in hindsight I shouldn’t be surprised I was given the ultimate test of the work I’d been doing on the mountain within the first few months of Jax’s arrival. I’ve failed similar tests hundreds of times before, but in 2022 I aced the big one and realized I’d taken a step without even knowing it.

It wasn’t that I stood up for a dog that got me a passing grade. In fact, that part bombed. The dog is no better for my attempt to translate on her behalf a message that was painfully obviously to me.

What I offered as helpful insight threatened a demon who awoke and retaliated by insulting everything I know and stand for. I looked it in the face as it belittled, demeaned, and trivialized my experience and love for canines and my volunteer work in rescue.

The foul energy I absorbed left me physically ill for some time; empty, but I passed the test by seeing this demon wasn’t mine to know or engage, for it never even saw a mountain of its own.

But I did respond:

I put up some boundaries in concrete; changed the scope of Walk with Me and launched it; received hugs, said yes to every puppy and dog that needed a foster mom; took baths, did a few kaizen events in Crazy Town; streamlined my bottle baby program; tested Jax as a mentor dog and brought home Hooch; studied; played with my microscope; made a thrifted puppy play gym in my backyard, and when it got cold, made another one upstairs; invented stuff for my babies; got Mona out from under a porch, took in more fosters, met & enlisted the help of some wonderful kids, chauffeured my dogs to the river every morning this summer, spent a lot of time in the woods, identified new species of fungi on logs; drove Hooch to Maryland and Kamino to Richmond; dabbled in asking for help and got MOMMED and loved by all of y’all, was pooped

on a lot, looked homeless every day; learned there’s a filter on the washing machine by clogging it; rounded out the year with six bottle babies graduating to beautiful lives, 3 of whom left the area, but are members of the same extended (magnificent) family and will get to keep in touch with each other for the rest of their lives; witnessed a miracle for the precious baby Fenner, and welcomed 4 more homeless dogs before Christmas, one of whom is clunky Simon who gagged up some water on my Christmas sheets before I even laid on them.

…and that’s just what I thought of on the toilet!

It was a year of hard lessons, but Mother Nature always nurtures me, and last year she didn’t just send an unprecedented number of bottle babies and miscellaneous other dogs to Crazy Town, but she sent y’all in too.

You showed up every time more babies came and supported us to the hilt. You funded thrift shop trips and purchased food, supplies, and other necessities and removed my worry about the expense of caring for so many babies. You saw me, cooked for me; noticed. Y’all said things so validating, you changed my perspective. You delivered speeches that left me speechless. You cheered with me and wept with me and reassured me. You forced me to start a love note section in the puppy room because you wrote me notes I can’t read just once. You hugged me and breathed good vibes back into me,

and helped mend a mom’s broken spirit.

Thanks for loving so loud.

Thanks for helping me.

Thanks for healing me.

Thank you for taking care of the mom.

Happy New Year, fam. Sending love and my very best wishes on whatever mountains you’re climbing in 2023.

Make sure to watch the video all the way til the end.