Honestly, I know how it sounds, she’s talking about her dogs again… just hear me out.

Let me lay the stage for a moment. My husband and I have three dogs. Three big dogs; three big, beautiful, affectionate, crazy dogs. First came Luna, who we adopted in June 2021. Two weeks later, surprise!, we realized Luna was pregnant and two weeks after that she gave birth to eight beautiful puppies. Inexperienced as we were with puppies and birthing mother dogs, we were immediately smitten and when the time came to hand the puppies back to the shelter for adoption we decided to keep two. Why two? Well, for the really excellent and well-thought out reason that we simply couldn’t agree on which one to keep. After the ridiculousness of housing eight of them, the prospect of only two didn’t seem so bad. My husband wanted to keep Jupiter, the largest and roly-poly-est of the bunch; and I wanted to keep Comet, one of the tiniest with the cutest black patches on his eye and opposite ear. So we kept them both, plus mom. Luna, Jupiter, and Comet. Our three little jelly beans.

(Lesson Number One: probably don’t ever do this.)

I’m not really sure how to describe that first year other than to say it was absolute chaos, and our house felt like a hurricane was constantly blowing through. Two hurricanes actually, each equipped with a set of shiny, brand new, baby white chompers that tore through everything from our skin to our flooring.

It took a lot- a lot– of work. It felt like a full time job on top of our full time jobs. I was also keenly aware that the first year is a crucial development period for dogs and I took that responsibility very seriously. I spent every waking moment focused on training, enrichment, socialization, and more training. We had been warned about littermate syndrome so we did everything we could to avoid it: separate meals, separate training, separate sleeping areas, separate walks, separate everything as much as possible.

Once they hit 12-15 months, things started to calm down. The puppies were friendly with people and dogs and relaxed in the car and at stores and coffee shops. I was starting to think we were doing really well, and that if I hadn’t hit 100% on all my training goals, I felt I had covered the bases well enough that we could fill in the gaps later on without too much trouble. (Where was Luna in all this, you might ask? Well, she was hanging out very patiently in the background. And when the puppies started to slow down, it seemed like we were about ready to start tackling Luna’s training.)

(Hang in there. I’m almost to the point.)

Then the pups turned 18 months old in late January 2023, and it was like a little internal switch flipped inside Jupiter. Our super sweet, patient, mellow, relaxed, friendly little guy turned into an anxious mess. Within a few weeks he totally withdrew, and changed pretty significantly. He didn’t enjoy going out anymore. He was afraid of new people. And worst of all he lost all patience with his brother Comet, who is very sweet but significantly higher energy, impatient, a bit pushy, and melodramatic. Jupiter’s anxiety manifested in picking fights with Comet, a new and extremely scary development. When I tell you the stress that it caused me, not understanding why they were fighting or how to help them or make it stop. I will be honest: I had a couple breakdown moments where I just felt completely overwhelmed. I felt intense guilt for keeping two. I wondered if we should re-home one of them.

In June 2023, we were able to start working with a professional dog behaviorist. She is the one who identified that Jupiter was the cause of the fighting. She identified that it was because of his anxiety. And she assured us that, based on his history and personality, it seemed as if his anxiety was just part of who he is and not the direct result of anything specific we had done. She started helping us manage their interactions and taught us how to help them cope with each other. We just recently started Jupiter on anxiety medication as we weren’t able to fully stop the fighting even with extensive behavior management.

(Lesson Number Two: Hire the Professional.)

(Lesson Number Two Point Five: if your dogs ever fight for months without biting each other once, it means they do actually still love each other. Don’t worry. Well, worry enough to hire a professional and put in the work. But don’t worry because your dogs also want to get through this.)

As we’ve gotten a better grip on their behavior, and I’ve learned more about how to manage dogs with anxiety particularly within the context of a multi-dog household, there’s a few things I’m noticing.

Lessons Numbered Three through Nine:

• When Jupiter is stressed and showing signs of anxiety, the best thing for Comet and Luna to do is just get out of the way and let me handle it. (Author’s note: they do a good job at this.) Neither of them can manage Jupiter’s anxiety. I can. I just need them to step aside and let me work.
• Jupiter is, in fact, the same dog that he was before. No one swapped him with an anxious doppelgänger in the middle of the night. Some things are the same. He still likes to play. He has a couple human friends that he is still very friendly with. He still loves to cuddle. I might wish that other things were the same. But if I look carefully, not everything has changed.
• When I am frustrated with Jupiter, I find I don’t compare him to Comet or Luna. I compare him to the earlier version of himself. The “anxiety-free” version, aka the version that didn’t cause me so much stress (because come on, isn’t this all about me?). This is just as bad as comparing him to another dog. He can’t go back to that version of himself any less than I can go back to the ten-year-old or fifteen-year-old version of myself. It’s not fair to hold that against him.
• He didn’t ask for this any more than I did. And if I’m confused and frustrated and annoyed, he’s confused and stressed and scared.
• The only way out is forward. The anxiety isn’t going away. Just accept it. Just accept it.
• His anxiety is part of who he is. It seemed like a switch flipped and it showed up out of nowhere, but that’s not true. It was already there, sneakily pushing buttons and pulling levers and manipulating thoughts, eventually trickling down into changed behavior.
• Jupiter is still lovable, still likable, and still one of the best dogs I know.

I’ve spent so much time, energy, and money on and with my dogs over the last two and a half years that there have been moments I wondered if it was a good use of those things. I am such a dog person and I will probably always have a dog in my house, but I wonder sometimes if having so many dogs (especially ones with behavioral issues) isn’t holding me back from the things God really wanted me to do. I don’t really know God’s stance on dogs, outside of the fact that they aren’t made in His image. But what does that mean about how we are to care for them as stewards of the earth and everything in it? Are they worth all of this to Him?

Recently I prayed about it and that very same day I started to identify these lessons (three through nine specifically), which really are freakishly relevant to my own life. So I still don’t have all the answers but that didn’t seem like a coincidence to me. And I think there’s a final lesson, Lesson Number Ten, about how God uses all things, even things that seem neutral, for what Dr. Larry Crabb calls “the slow work of formation.”¹

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1. Crabb, Dr. Larry. When God’s Ways Make No Sense. Baker Books, 2018. ↩︎