I Ain't Afeard!

Anaïs Nin "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."— Anaïs Nin

Maisy Ross saying, “I ain’t afeard!”

Yesterday, my friend, Todd, told me that he’s rereading Huckleberry Finn, one of the books he loved as a boy.

"One of my favorite lines," he said, "is, 'I ain't afeard.'"

I've always loved that old-fashioned word, afeard. Besides reading it in Huckleberry Finn, you find it in Shakespeare's plays and in those Regency dramas I can never resist.

I ain’t afeard is a great phrase and an even better aspiration. As I spend more and more time working with dogs, I realize that's exactly what I'm hoping to help them feel, too.

Three times a week I work with a Labradoodle named Maisy. She’s a doll: affectionate, funny, and eager to please. But there are a few things she’s convinced are something to be feared: strange sounds, flags flapping in the wind, plastic bags tumbling across the road, and certain people—especially men. None of those fears are unusual for a dog.

I don't believe in forcing her through her fears.

I believe in helping dogs discover, at their own pace, that the world isn't as frightening as they think.

The other day we were walking through a busy shopping area. There were people, bicycles, skateboards, cars, conversations. Maisy handled all of it calmly.

That is until we came upon a food truck.

On the ground near it was a speaker playing music.

Maisy pulled on her leash to get away, making it very clear she wanted no part of the monstrous black object, shaped like a big rock, that was making that such a strange noise.

This was a perfect teaching opportunity for me and a learning experience for her.

We found the distance where Maisy could tolerate the sound without barking or pulling on her leash. Then we began making slow, calm circles around the area. We walked. Paused. Let her observe. Let her be curious. Walked again. Each circle brought us just a few inches closer.

Little by little, the terrifying speaker became...well...just a speaker. Soon Maisy was sitting right in front of it. When she looked up at me with those excited brown eyes, I imagined her saying, I ain’t afeard.

Maybe that’s how we’re meant to approach our own fears.

Humans can be a fearful species. We fear the differences in one another, and sometimes that fear grows into hatred or war. We fear there won’t be enough money, enough time, enough love, enough success, so we grasp tighter and tighter. We avoid looking too closely at our own shadows because we're afraid of what we might find.

But what if we approached our fears the way Maisy approached that speaker?

Not by throwing ourselves headlong into them or pretending they don’t exist. But by circling them with curiosity.

Moving a little closer.

Asking, what am I really afraid of?

What’s the worst that could happen?

More often than not, the thing we’ve imagined is far more frightening than the thing itself.

As I’ve gotten older, I think I’ve become less fearful. But if I’m being truthful, there are still fears I carry. The fear of losing the people I love. The fear of insignificance. Wondering whether all the years I've poured into writing about the human-animal bond will, in the long run, help people see animals with greater compassion and understanding.

Those haven’t disappeared.

This week, as Maisy and I continue working on another of her fears, strange men, I think I’ll work on that insignificance thing.

Maybe that’s how fear gradually loosens its hold on us. We take one more concentric circle toward the thing that frightens us until, one day, we’re no longer circling it. We’re standing right in front of it, finally able to say,

I ain’t afeard.

Stay Healthy & Stay Pawsitive,

Carlyn MDO

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