Finding a Dog = Finding a Therapist

This is the first picture I ever saw of Pants. To be totally honest, it wasn’t love at first sight. Looking back at my camera reel from that time, there’s screenshot after screenshot of PetFinder dogs we fell in love with and applied for, only to find out they’d already been adopted. By the time we saw Pants, it was more of a, “Well, this one checks our boxes,” sensation than heart eyes and unicorn sparkles.  

When was the last time you looked for a therapist? If it’s been in the last five years, you might have had a similar experience – finding a clinician whose warmth radiated from their picture, whose website resonated deeply, and who takes your insurance (!!!) – only to learn they weren’t taking new clients. When you finally found someone who checked enough of your boxes to be “good enough,” you made an appointment without much enthusiasm.

We met Pants on a hot, sunny day. She was sweet and excitable, and seemed to have a good temperament. The shelter director told us Pants had had a hard journey. She was picked up on the street in Texas and kept at the local pound for a week while they looked for her family. When no one claimed her, she was transported to Portland. Then she was moved again to another shelter outside of Portland. In just six weeks, she’d traveled across the United States and seen the inside of four shelters. She was stressed AF. Sounds like she could use a therapist, right?

I’M FINE THIS IS FINE

We agreed to do a foster-to-adopt to see if it was a good fit before we committed. My wife and I were both thankful for this option – what if we weren’t ready for another dog? What if we brought this dog home and all we could see was how she wasn’t like our two dogs we’d lost a few months ago? What if we didn’t like her, or she didn’t like us?

The first time you meet a therapist, you might be nervous. That’s normal. Therapy is a bizarre relationship: in the first appointment you’re expected to tell an absolute stranger all the worst things in your life, and then you’re meant to continue telling this person everything you don’t tell anyone else even though you know exactly zero things about them. And then when you’re feeling better, you say goodbye to them, which is not how most relationships end. Usually, relationships end because you break up or someone dies or moves or you fall out of touch. Not because things are going exceptionally well. Therapy is weird.

But it works. It helps people feel better in deep and lasting ways. The magic sauce?

Relationship.

Across all different kinds of therapeutic approaches, research repeatedly shows that what helps people get better is the relationship between the client and the therapist. If you feel like your therapist understands you, empathizes with you, and cares for you, you have a higher likelihood of feeling better.

This is called the working alliance. How do you know if you have that with your therapist? There isn’t a checklist or test you can complete to be sure - it requires you to listen to your gut. But the good news is that it’s been researched, too. A strong working alliance with the therapist, as reported by the client at the third session, is one of the best predictors of positive outcomes by the end of therapy.

In other words, if you don’t feel like you have a good connection with your therapist by session three (at the latest), trust yourself. Keep looking for the right one.

Which was why I was so relieved to know that the animal shelter would give my wife and me two weeks commitment-free to try out life with Pants. It would give us time to see if we were right for each other.

Within the first couple of days, Pants was scheduled to get spayed. I stayed home with her for the first week – she had a cone on, she wasn’t crate trained, and I didn’t know her well enough to leave her roaming about the house. But after a week, her surgery recovery was going well, so I made dinner plans with a friend. I set Pants up in the office, the only room in the house that definitely had nothing she could destroy or hurt herself on, and left for 90 minutes.

It’s not a long time, guys.

When I got home, I sensed something on my front porch. It was dusk and I’d forgotten to turn on the porch light, so I turned on my phone light and approached cautiously. Suddenly something big and black came darting at me from the corner, making a high whining sound – it was Pants!

I got her inside and checked her over. Her stitches were intact, but her e-collar was missing, and she was filthy. “What happened, baby girl?” I asked as she whined in my arms. I wish she could answer me. All I know is I left the back window open a crack – a crack – and Pants managed to push it open. She fell six feet to the backyard got her collar off, and squeezed under the fence to freedom.

Pants could have been long gone by the time I got home. She could have disappeared into the night and wound up in another shelter. And yet she curled up on the porch and waited for me – someone she’d only met two weeks ago – to come home.

I don’t know what made Pants decide to wait on the porch for me rather than running away. I’d like to think she felt safe from the first, because of how we gave her good food and a comfortable bed, pet her gently and gave her space when she asked for it. I’d like to believe it was the relationship that kept her on the porch and made her burst out of the shadows and crawl into my lap when I got home.

I know finding a therapist is daunting. There are so many steps, so many barriers. But if you listen to your gut and keep looking for that clinician who really hears you and understands you, you will give yourself the gift of a safe place to heal.