A lot happened in the past few years. My mom passed. My brother passed. My cat passed, to name just a few.
To say I have been suffering through depression and grief feels like a huge understatement.
Needing something to get me out of my funk, I decided to adopt a new pet about a year after Shadow, my cat, passed. I considered a dog and a cat, or a pair of doggos, did some research into local shelters and essentially went window shopping on the web. Nothing really caught my eye.
Except, I kept seeing this Border Collie. The photo was adorable (no, I don’t have it). The description on him, not so much. It mentioned he had issues with separation anxiety, and I’d had a dog many years ago with similar issues who destroyed my furniture one day while I was at work. So. I kept scrolling past this puppy as I was window shopping.
I made up my mind, and a list of pups to visit, and headed to the shelter – the Denver Dumb Friends League.
At the shelter, I found out they had some rules about how many pets you can see on a visit and it was likely I would only get to visit with one pup. All the pups on my list were visiting with prospective families, so I walked around the kennels to make a new list.
Ronan – he had a different name and I would change it to Ronan later – wasn’t in his kennel. There were a LOT of pitbulls. I had a bad experience with a pit in an apartment complex I lived in for a couple years. Something about me set him on edge and he would get super aggressive anytime I was around, which set me on edge when this huge dog would come barreling at me like a bullet, barking and snarling. So. No pit for me.
I made few passes through the kennels and eventually asked about Ronan. A volunteer told me he got a lot of visits, but due to his anxiety issues, no one wanted to adopt him. He was in with another family already, having gotten out of a visit a few mins before, and this family would most likely adopt him. So, I walked through again looking for a pup. And again, there were a lot of pits but not much else.
When I made my way back up to the front, the volunteer said the family had passed on Ronan – again due to his anxiety issues, and asked if I would be interested in a visit.
I said yes.
Had to wait a bit while they took him for a walk and let him burn off some excess energy.
When we got into the little room together, it was love at first sight. For me. He was pretty interested in not being in the room. But he did come to me, play with me, let me pet him, and when I asked him if he wanted to come home with me, he got this happy look on his face.
I was hooked.
They explained his issues to me. Separation anxiety and crate anxiety (he hated being put in a crate, and managed to destroy one to get out of it) were the major ones. When we got home, he followed me everywhere. I couldn’t close the bathroom door, for example, because he would start whining and then throwing himself against the door, scratching at it to get in.
But I noticed immediately he was stupid crazy smart, and sneaky (he stole bananas off the kitchen counter and took them off to chew on). He was also a hoover when it came to food, as if he were afraid it would be taken away from him if he didn’t eat it immediately. That has mostly gone away, which is wonderful. I did eventually have to get him a slow feeder.
I worked with him, walked him, tried to get some normality to his life. But I couldn’t leave him alone without him freaking the fuck out. So at first, my vet gave me meds to calm him down while I was gone and it did work. Essentially, it made him stoned out of his brain so he didn’t really care if I was gone or not. I didn’t like that. I explored some alternative options including things like marijuana chews but they didn’t seem to have any effect on him at all.
So I researched separation anxiety in dogs and found some training programs. Signed up for one and began training Ronan not to freak out when he’s alone, how to settle and know it’s going to be okay. Part of that is a routine I go through before leaving – loudly grabbing/jingling my keys, turning on a radio, grabbing my wallet, etc, and then leaving out the same door each time. And coming back through that same door.
In the year and change since, he’s calmed down so much people who met him in the beginning comment on the changes in him today. He’s chilled out.
That’s not to say he’s not still a total adorkable spaz – because he is. He makes me laugh my butt off every single day. And I really needed that.
We have healed each other in a lot of ways, which is amazing.
So. Meet Ronan. A 3-year old (as of June, 2024) Border Collie who has absolutely changed my life for the better.
