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The Neighborhood According to Dog
How my pup rewired my brain to include a mental trash map
When you’re thinking about getting a dog, there are certain obvious considerations.
Does your building allow pets? What supplies do you need? Can you afford said supplies, plus recurring expenses like food and vet visits?
The list could go on, and all are important things to consider before taking the plunge. Before adopting our little Azula, my partner and I considered them all.
Yet… dog ownership has changed me in other, unexpected ways, too.
Straight away, I fell in love with our little bundle of energy. Her sweet big eyes full of wonder, how she’d curl up into me in the face of the big, scary world.
Even the way she would stop and sit down, refusing to go a step further from the house on a walk, was cute. At first.
Soon enough, though, I realized that being Azula’s dog mom was going to be a challenge for me. Soon, I understood that it would rewrite a lot of the ways I think about the world.
You see, in a former life, I had a cat named Artemis. He and I shared three different apartments, and I was his primary caregiver for most of his life.
The thing about cats, though, is that they don’t really leave your space (if they’re an indoor cat, anyway). There’s only so much you can worry about with a cat, and you can minimize a lot of that by cultivating your space to be cat-friendly.
Dogs, on the other hand, are made to interact with the world. This means that you go out where anything can happen, just your dog’s loyalty and leash tethering them to you. And to safety.
Australian Cattle Dogs and Australian Shepherds are high-energy, herding dogs. They need a lot of exercise, and so, Azula gets at least two walks a day.
As the resident early riser slash person who insisted on a Blue Heeler like Benji from Yoga with Adriene, morning walks with Azula are part of my domain.
That’s when the real fun began.
The first thing I learned about dog ownership is that, unlike cat ownership, it is a social venture.
