My dogs are my Kryptonite

Personal responsibility, freedom and canaries.

In last week’s post I mentioned that I’ve been teaching myself to not feel responsible for people’s feelings, while still taking responsibility for my choices and actions. If you missed it, you can catch up here.

I’ve been actively trying to cultivate this skill for approximately 1467 years. I’d remind myself over and over and over the fuck again:

And I gotta say, it’s actually working! NOT feeing responsible is ever-so-slowly becoming my default mode. At least with people. But,

I recently went for a walk WITHOUT the dogs, and the difference in my experience was striking.

Because the universe is hilarious, this literally just happened: I was adding the image above when Gussy started barking. His bark was muffled, which led me to these increasingly panicked thoughts as I searched for him:

Don’t worry. He was fine. He usually is.

The biggest scare I had with him was when I accidentally dropped his lead while walking and Gussy ran his little heart out on the footpath beside a MAIN ROAD as I chased him, screaming his name.

Luckily, he magically turned around at some point and came back to me. I grabbed him and sat back against a fence crying.

When I calmed down, I looked Gussy in the eyes and had a serious conversation with him.

Did I think this ‘serious conversation’ would make Gussy change his adventure-seeking ways? Not really. I do think dogs pick up on our energy, and understand more than we think. But that conversation was for me. I was trying to free ME.

And although it’s something I’m still moving through, I am carrying my ‘responsibility’ for the dogs more lightly than ever before. As I play with unpacking this in different ways, I’m finding more things that help. Especially during dog walks.

Ultimately, the chronic over-responsibility I feel for my dogs isn’t just my kryptonite. It’s also my canary in the coal mine.

And I’m thankful for that. Because trying to heal my old addiction to over-responsibility is a lot easier when I can get a sense of where I am with it. So thanks Canary friend, thanks puppies, and thanks me.

And thank YOU for being here! If you have something to say about any of this, or anything at all, then here’s our handy little ‘comment’ button:

If you prefer to respond to questions, then here you go:

1. What was your favourite panel this week?

2. What’s your relationship with personal responsibility/feeling overly responsible?

3. What have you found helpful when it comes to knowing what you really are responsible for vs what you’re not?

4. Watched/read/listened to anything good lately?

5. I feel a bit bad about the canary friend in the cage. I thought about releasing him in another drawing, but then I wondered if he knew how to survive in the wild. Discuss.

And finally, I recently discovered that you hitting the heart button is basically the same as sending Substack a bat-signal, telling them that Great Things rocks (which means they may share it with more people)! If you enjoyed this post, wanna give it a heart? Comments rock too, of course.

Ps. If you‘ve been following me for a while you’ll know that on another occasion, I fell over and dropped Nelson’s lead - on the same main road as what happened with Gussy (that road is clearly cursed)! That adventure culminated in Nelsy being rescued from the side of a cliff by 35 members of the police, the fire brigade and emergency services. If you wanna catch up on that (and see the photos!), you can do that here.