On Mapping, Risk Management, and Clues

By Catherine DiMercurio

Not everyone prioritizes a sense of safety. Some folks are natural risk takers and enjoy adrenaline rushes, and for other people, that rush causes not a pleasurable feeling, but a host of uncomfortable after effects. Everyone is wired differently. Still, most people want to feel emotionally safe and physically safe within their homes and neighborhoods. I suspect that even the natural risk takers prefer to seek out their adventures rather than be surprised by them on a morning walk.

I’m not a natural risk taker, and I’m okay with that. I can be cajoled, either by myself or others, to try new things, because I do value the growth that new experiences invite. But there are certain environments where I think it is reasonable to expect safety, and one of them is when walking one’s dog in one’s neighborhood.

It’s hard, then, to not look at the dog attack my dog and I experienced recently as a violation and a setback, for both my dog and for me. We’re both okay. It could have been worse in so many ways. But the problem with that “it could have been worse” thinking is that while it does invite you to be grateful for all that didn’t happen, it does dismiss what did. And in the frightening moments when something terrifying is happening, you don’t yet know how bad it is or will be. It feels life threatening. Lots of thoughts flash through your head, and in my case, I had no idea, in the midst of the attack, if my dog would escape without serious, or even fatal, injuries. We’d walked past a house I usually avoid. The dogs are tied up, but there’s no fence. You can’t see them at first, because there are always a lot of cars in the driveway blocking the view. We didn’t see the one that must have slipped his collar until he was running across the street, headed right for my dog, ignoring my firm shouts of no, and my stance, squared off in front of my dog, all of which have gotten us out of other situations with loose dogs.

When we finally escaped and returned home, I both panicked and collected myself enough to check my dog over for wounds. I thought of the minutes that we both fought, and how loudly I screamed pointlessly for help that didn’t come. I thought of how long we were followed by the other dog, and how I repeatedly had to shout and stomp him away and keep myself in front of my dog, to avoid a continuation of the attack. I thought about how it felt like my legs were shaking so badly I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it home anyway. I thought of the woman who, a block over from where the attack occurred, came out of her house with a broom to help fend of the dog so my dog and I could make our escape without being followed. It could have been worse. We ended up not needing to go to the vet, though in the days that have followed, I’ve continued to examine my dog, peering through his thick double coat, studying the wound I missed initially. There’s a minor, scabbed-over line? gash? that could have either been from the harness or a tooth or a claw, but it looks to be healing and I haven’t noticed any signs of infection. I never saw any blood on that first day, and yet, it is scabbed, reminding me of the way I’d skin my knee after a fall as a child, and how the abraded skin would sort of bead up but never really bleed, and then a thick scab would form.

I worry I’ve let him down by not finding it sooner. I worry I let him down. I worry.

He continues to be active, playful, and is eating and drinking normally. He was like this almost immediately. For a week, we didn’t go for walks.  We’ve started again, the first time back out being with my boyfriend, which provided us with an added sense of security, in addition to the airhorn I brought along.

Still, I find myself recalling other significant moments in life where my sense of safety has felt similarly erased, as if this event calls up a map, revealing neural shortcuts. I’ve realized in recent days that there are a lot of these shortcuts, and the older you get, the more of them there are. The map is intricate. A song can take us back to a key moment in our past, a smell can, an event can. Every day we have more past than we used to have. Some of the memories we travel back to are beautiful, and some are the worst we’ve experienced. So often, it is the painful memories that surface with ease, seemingly un-dulled by time.

I remind myself in the aftermath of all this, that it isn’t my job to do everything possible to avoid more pain. It’s to populate that map with so many new, good things that the pathways back to the frightening or wounding memories are crossed over many times with side trails, alternate routes, shortcuts to joyful recollections, to peaceful moments, to delight, to wonder.

Now, though, I’m more fully aware of how wrong a simple dog walk can go. In the past, even though we’ve been approached by loose dogs before, I have felt a false sense of security because the owners have been nearby, or showed up, and things were diffused before they turned ugly. I thought the risk I was managing was more minimal than it is.

At the same time, the usual joy and pleasure of the morning walk is not something I can give up easily. And based on his demeanor the two times we’ve walked since the attack, it isn’t something my dog wants to give up either. We have some work to do. I do think he’s more skittish than usual, and we still need to do things like walk as early as possible so that we can avoid other dog walkers. He was reactive before this, and the attack is definitely not going to help. But, I’m starting a new training plan. I have an air horn. I have pepper spray.

It’s difficult though, to find that sweet spot, where appropriate caution and enjoyment can cohabitate. Where I’m not leaning too hard into risk management, or too hard into peaceful obliviousness. But this is the way with everything. It’s the same in this new relationship I’m in. For the first several months, I felt so self-protective, unwilling to jump all the way into the vulnerability that builds the closeness that I long for. Once you’ve tried to build that over and over with other people and it doesn’t work out, it’s so easy to hesitate, to hold back. Still, things are beginning to change for me, and while I’m not jumping in with wild abandon, I’m wading in, and enjoying the process of slow and deliberate acclimation, and it’s been so wonderful to do that with such a compassionate and loving person by my side. I think he sees my true value because I was finally able to see it (and I see his). All of this encourages the blossoming of trust, which I think of as my body’s and my mind’s own intrinsic from of risk management.

We all have different strategies for getting us through tough times, and sometimes it seems like none of them are particularly effective. I remind myself that the route toward healing is not trying to make myself “feel better.” It’s allowing myself to experience the feelings various events create and trigger. I used to think “working through” things meant thinking my way out of feeling sad or angry or scared. But to a certain extent, I’m starting to understand that being brave enough to not avoid all those heavy feelings is the most direct route toward getting to the other side of them. I often worry that I’m dwelling too much on something, but I believe that sense comes from my habit of trying analyze my feelings instead of simply experiencing them. Maybe it would be better to look at my hyper-focused thought patterns as clues to feelings I need to spend more time with, rather than thoughts that I need to keep rethinking.

I don’t want to feel like I’m prioritizing safety so much so that I’m missing opportunities to experience fun, joy, delight. I want to give my dog a good life, and I want that for myself. As with most things in life, the balance here—between risk management and pleasure-seeking—is hard to achieve. For me, it is important to remember to be patient with myself, and not label my process of bouncing back from a frightening experience as an overcorrection. We were truly in a dangerous situation and the world isn’t telling me to “get back out there,” but a part of me is hearing that anyway.

For now, I’m going to take it slow, and lean into my support system, and populate my map with as many shortcuts to good memories as I can. There’s no right way to do any of this. Safe travels, friends.

Love, Cath