The Dog Who Made Me More Honest (About Everything)

A sensitive dog can change your whole world, then teach you how to rebuild it with intention. We sit down with Haley, who’s been living full-time van life for nearly three and a half years with Scout, her Australian cattle dog mix rescue, and the story is equal parts adventure and hard-won calm. From a Wisconsin shelter to a home that fits on four wheels, Scout’s journey shows how safety is often less about where you are and more about what stays consistent.

Haley gets candid about what “reactivity” really looked like for Scout after a dog attack, and how easily fear can be mislabeled as stubbornness or “bad behavior.” We dig into dog mental health, environmental sensitivity, and the reality that some dogs don’t explode when overwhelmed they freeze, which can trick us into thinking they’re fine. One of the most useful threads is the training pivot: shifting away from obsessing over stillness and toward play-based confidence, where engagement becomes a better signal than silence.

You’ll also hear what it’s like to travel 49 states with a dog, why public land and wide-open space can be a game changer for reactive dogs, and how the Florida Keys brought a rare season of staying put while Haley volunteers as a campground host. If you’ve ever felt isolated by training challenges or overwhelmed by loud online advice, this conversation offers a grounded way forward: define your priorities, read your dog, and build resilience together.

Subscribe for more real pet stories, share this with a friend who loves dogs and travel, and leave a review telling us what part of Scout’s journey you related to most.

1. Purchase the Book that inspired the Podcast
2. Want to share your pets story on a future podcast?  
   1. Send us a message: SUBSCRIBE
3. All new, the first ever Pet Journal - start logging your memories with your Pet
   1. Click -> Pet Journal

Transcript

Welcome And What Paw Prints Mean

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good afternoon, everybody. I am Dan Popovic. Welcome to another episode of Every Paw Print, Every Story. For new listeners, what this podcast is about is literally that, right? Every paw print has a story. They have a story to our heart. These are fun episodes where we invite families in to talk about the fur kids. You will hopefully laugh with some of these episodes. You may cry. We do occasionally talk about pet loss and that impact. Hopefully, you will get inspired. But along the way, feel supported in just the journeys and listening to these amazing families and guests that we have on this episode. And I make super excited for today's episode. Haley and I briefly were catching up before this. I feel like she's a world traveler. So we're gonna kind of get into all of that. So, Haley, welcome to the show today.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Thanks so much for having me. I'm happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

And like you, like you were telling me earlier, down in the keys today. Um, you've been down in the keys for what, a week? Longer than a week, a month?

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Uh, we got here at the start of April, so it's been like two and a half months now.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Living out of the camper, so that's awesome. And how long have you been uh living out of the camper?

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Um, it'll be three and a half years this July. So almost three and a half.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Okay, so camper, and then naturally we've got fur kids that are part of the family living in the camper with us, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Yeah, we have one dog, her name is Scout, and she's an Australian cattle dog mix.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Okay.

How Scout Joined The Family

SPEAKER_00 1:41

So how did Scout become part of the family?

SPEAKER_01 1:45

We um I actually met her, so I adopted her before my now husband and I were married or engaged. We had only been dating for about four months. Um, so I'll use the singular eye in this story, although she's very much both of our dog now. Um, my my family, my parents had previously adopted a Siberian husky from our hometown's local shelter, and she was the first dog that really introduced me to the depth of the dog training world, the the depth of dogs as individuals. I grew up with two bichons. Um, and I like to say that they were deeply loved but poorly understood. We were a dog-loving family, but we weren't the best, you know, um, at caring for them in species appropriate ways and really trying to understand their inner world. So, long story short, we had adopted Snort, the Siberian Husky, from my hometown shelter. She came with the name, we tried to change it, didn't stick.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

And I love it. That's funny.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

Yeah, yeah, that was that that was very funny. Um she had the name at the shelter, and it was a really long adoption process because she had these extra medical needs. And so by the time my parents officially had custody of her, we had known her as Snort for too many months, and we just couldn't go back.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Um, so she has a Snort.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

She did not, no. She's this gorgeous, dark-faced Siberian husky. I mean, just like one of the most elegant, beautiful dogs you've ever seen. Um, so Snort was my dog in a lot of ways, but we ultimately decided, based on her personality and needs and where my parents were in their lives versus where I was, that she would be happier staying with my parents. They've got this fenced-in yard, they live this quiet suburban life. And so I found myself two years after that in my first post-college apartment, living with one of my old college roommates up on the third floor in downtown Madison, Wisconsin, feeling very, very dogless and very sad about being dogless. So when we went to the Humane Society, the same shelter that I'd grown up visiting to drop off some Christmas donations, I saw a scout in one of the kennels when we were going around visiting. Um, didn't know anything about her except that she reminded me of Snort because they were both these high-energy breeds, but particularly sensitive, nervous, reserved individuals. And so there was this, you know, sort of analogous link between them. And that made me first take notice of her. Um, and then yeah, the the rest is the rest is history, the rest is now.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

And okay, so did we get to name Scout or did it come, did he come with a name?

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Uh she was Zip at the shelter.

unknown 4:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Yep. Zip, Z-I-P, which was cute enough. Um, I was truthfully concerned that it would sound too much like sit. I'm a big dog training nerd. And um, it's also a tradition that ever since I was really little, all of my pets have names from books. So she is officially Scout Finch from To Kill a Mocking Bird.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

Okay, very cool. Love the story. Um, but now I'm fascinated. So Scout came from the same rescue as Snort.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

So you you got uh Zip and Snort. I'm kind of fascinated with their naming convictions there, right?

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Yeah, I mean they are the the like open intake um county shelter there. And so they get this wide range of um Snort was actually an owner surrender, so Snort came from her owner previously. Um Zip was found as a stray, so I don't know who was in charge of the naming there at the shelter, but they've they've had some really funny litters of kittens over the years where like they'll kind of choose names around a theme. I always find that super cute.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Yeah, that is that is cool. Love the name Scout. Um feels fitting if you're doing a lot of this traveling, right? So you're kind of out scouting various areas, right?

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Yeah, yeah. Lots of opportunities for some some good on-the-nose puns there.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

And so are you are you originally from the Wisconsin area?

SPEAKER_01 6:07

Yep, born and raised in central Wisconsin.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Okay, so then as you were saying earlier, now home base is the the trailer, so you guys are kind of maneuvering to various areas.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Yeah, yeah. We um we briefly had a house in Florida for about three years before we moved into the van, and then we sold that to be able to afford the van, and now the van is home.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

So, what are some of the gosh, let's talk about some of these adventures, like the places you've been with Scout. Well, how actually you may have mentioned it. So, how old is Scout?

SPEAKER_01 6:43

We're not exactly sure. Um, she was somewhere between like one and three years when I adopted her, and I've had her for about seven and a half. So we take the higher estimate. Um, I I say that she's about 10, just trying to make sure that I I'd rather be over prepared for how long I have with her than than feel blindsided by it. So nine to ten-ish.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Okay. And then I so so she's been doing a lot of traveling with you. So I'm I'm assuming she loves the traveling.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

She likes parts of it. Um, she definitely loves being with us all the time. I think that's a huge improvement for her over when we lived in a house. And she also loves having her familiar space. I joke that the van is kind of like this extra-large dog crate for her because anywhere we go, she has her house with her. Um, she's a pretty sensitive gal. She's come a long way with her confidence. We've done a lot of training and a lot of play-focused work in our years together. But I think that having that safe, familiar space of the van has really enabled her to thrive living like this. I was nervous at first because she had come so far. Um, but you know, she's environmentally sensitive. She she falls on the timid side. So there was some anxiety on my human end of like, okay, we're gonna uproot you, and I think you're ready for it, but are you really ready for it? And it's it's gone better than I could have hoped. She she does feel really comfortable in the van. Um nice to have that sort of the constant familiarity underscoring all of the novelty that we experience.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

You mentioned so she's sensitive or sensitivity, I guess. So yeah, what do you mean by that?

From Timid To Fear Reactive

SPEAKER_00 8:27

Is it is it kind of a shyness thing when she's out and about and she towers away from other dogs, or what's the what's the sensitivity like?

SPEAKER_01 8:35

Yeah, um, so when she came to be, she was just in general very environmentally sensitive. We expect this in herding breeds to a degree, right? But for her, there was also this underlying fear. So it wasn't just like, oh, I'm aware of the environment and I'm doing the cattle dog thing. It was like I'm hyper-aware of the environment and also most things in the world are scary. Um, so you know, plastic bag blowing in the wind, shopping cart left on the sidewalk, someone threw an old mattress in front of their apartment. Like those were things to be very, very wary of. And then she was also nervous around other dogs at the shelter. They did some of the temperament testing, you know, just briefly there to try to give potential adopters an idea of what they'd be getting into. And um, I think the the exact lingo that they used was needs help building confidence around other dogs. And then about two weeks after I adopted her, um, she was attacked by another dog on a bathroom break walk outside my apartment building. So that took the timid around other dogs into full-blown fear reactivity. So she would have that porcupine puff-up response where she was truly scared. And if a dog actually reached her, she would cower, go belly up. It was really heartbreaking to see. Um, but from afar, she would put on the barking, growling, lunging, I'm so big and scary, get away from me before you can hurt me display. So fear reactive is the really common phrasing there. Um, I have so many mixed thoughts about like labels like reactive and how we assign these terms to dogs. So I I tend to choose sensitive because I just feel like it encompasses the you know, sort of the holistic nature of who she is, and it can have both positive and negative connotations because it really is such a complex mixed bag. But yeah, that's that's what we were dealing with for Lyme.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

She didn't get um hurt badly with that attack, did she?

SPEAKER_01 10:35

Um no, no, thankfully not physically hurt badly, just the the big mental emotional shakeup.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Yeah, it it's crazy the mental yeah, as I've been doing more of this and listening to families, just we we know the benefits, or we know about our mental health and issues with ours, but then you don't think about it with pets either. And it's it's pretty amazing, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Yeah, it really is. And it's there's just so many layers to it because you think about what it means to be a domestic dog, to be a canine, to live in this really fascinating intersection of like they are not wild animals. They they co-evolved with us, they're so close to humans in so many important social and emotional capacities. But then at the same time, like the modern human world is not like frankly what any of us evolved for. Um, and particularly for our domestic dogs who can't communicate in abstract verbal language, who can't express their needs and their preferences, you know, as articulately as as you and I can to each other. Um, yeah, it's like it's this so super important thing. And then it's also just on the human end, properly difficult, I think, to understand and act on. So that's become a big, big point of passion for me after living and loving her for so long.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

Okay. Well, yeah, let's come back to that because I have my head spinning with questions or directions to go with. Yeah. Um sorry, I'll just talk forever. No, that that's yeah, yeah, the less I talk, the better. Um, because definitely want to get into some of that. But the one thing I was thinking about I was listening to you is still the fascination of being in um the the camper for you said what three, three and a half years now.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

Yeah.

Why The Van Helps Her Thrive

SPEAKER_00 12:19

Um what I what are there are there typical places that you go to just more for her, you know, cognizant of of her well-being that you know that she will like and what are the you know, what like what kind of places?

SPEAKER_01 12:36

Yeah, that's such a great question. Scout's favorite place in the whole world is public land, so usually Bureau of Land Management Land like out west or national forest land. And she loves those places because it's often really easy to get space to ourselves. Um, the majority of them, not all of them, but the majority of them allow dogs off-leash under voice control, so she can, you know, just sort of roam freely with us. And there are, you know, all of these really interesting, like wildlife smells, scents. Just that whole experience, I think, is really fulfilling for her. Um, for such a nervous dog, she is a really physical dog, which again is something that you would not be surprised about in a blue healer. So she loves like the confidence and the joy that she exudes when she gets to leap over fallen trees or like climb a rock formation with us in Utah. It's like she just transforms. We joke that she goes feral, and I mean that in the best possible way. Like she's this shy, reserved pet dog, and you know, it's like she just turns into this wonderful coyote wolf badass creature.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

Okay, you got me on the rock climbing. Seriously, rock climbing.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

Yeah, I mean, not like um I I should be very clear about what I mean here. Like my partner and I don't do any fancy like harness rock climbing. We don't do any of that with her. Just like, you know, you'll have a like a formation. Um, I can pass along a photo or two. Like Utah has all of these really cool rock formations that aren't like super high cliffs, but have some boulders, and you can kind of like leap from thing to thing. And yeah, I'm always amazed, even at this age. Um, this past winter, we were in Joshua Tree National Park at one of the campgrounds, and there's just like all of these rocks behind the campground. And some people do really intense, like amazing technical climbing there, but there are also these like less steep, shorter formations that you can just kind of walk up. Um, I'm telling you, she is faster and more agile at it than I am. She's just like a little mountain goat once she gets going, and she'll just like you won't give her any direction. She'll just throw herself on top of the rock and then just look at you like, see, I did it. Isn't this amazing? It's it's such a joy. It's like one of the only moments that I feel like that part of her personality really gets to shine through.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

That's cool. So sounds sounds fearless, but I guess like you said, it's you've got kind of the place to your to yourself, so that helps. Um I'm curious, yeah, fascinated. So Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, all those areas you guys have been on adventures?

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Yep, we've we've actually been to 49 of the 50 states. So everywhere except Hawaii, we've taken the van.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Holy case. And it's in the three and a half year time frame? Totally. That's a winter. Okay, so where I'm in I'm in North Georgia. So now I'm curious, when were you in Georgia and where?

SPEAKER_01 15:44

Uh, we went to Cloudland Canyon, our very first when we were driving up out of Florida, um, spent a little bit of time in the Atlanta area, and then let's see, in the spring of 2024, we drove up the East Coast. We actually went all the way to Newfoundland, took the ferry, but on that route, um, we spent some time in Jekyll Island, which was really, really cool.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

Yeah, no, that yeah, that's a cool area. But um very, very cool, fascinating. Wow.

Wildlife Moments From The Road

SPEAKER_00 16:13

Um, oh, and it with all of these adventures and being out there kind of in nature, any crazy encounters with waterblind?

SPEAKER_01 16:24

Honestly, fewer than you would expect. So Scout had a really high prey drive in our earlier years together. Um, one of my worst dog ownership moments was just like literally sobbing on the sidewalk when we first moved to Florida because there were all of these super bold squirrels, and it was like Scout could not, she didn't even know that I existed around these squirrels. It was terrible. It was such a thing to work through. So then we did work really, really hard on it. So thankfully, by the time we moved into the van, her ability to kind of keep her head on straight around wildlife um is is pretty good. Like, especially when you're out on BLM land, a lot of it is open grazing. So this last year when we were in New Mexico and Arizona, sometimes cattle just like roam into your camp area. Um, so thankfully she is able to just kind of like look and dismiss. But on one of our hikes in Nova Scotia, we did see uh moose just a little bit off trail and uh juvenile black bear all within like a half hour of each other. Um that was uh a hiking area that required pets to be unleashed, and I immediately understood why. I I have a lot of trust in Scout. I think it would have been fine, but I definitely felt some extra peace of mind knowing that she was on her harness and on her leash around around that moose, especially, actually. Um, those those are the ones that tend to scare me most.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

Interesting, cool. That yeah, that's I've never seen a moot moose in public, so that's very cool.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

Um yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

So doing all this, and and so it sounds like well, you know, you you've got a lot of adventures.

Turning Van Life Into A Memoir

SPEAKER_00 18:05

So um books, we've got books, we've got pictures. What what are we all? Is that still to come? Just kind of like uh Hale and Scout adventures.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

Yeah, um, like for for what I share, or just want to make sure I'm understanding.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

Yeah, yeah. No, I know I was like totally out in the sky on that one. Um just you know, all the fascinating stories that you probably have accumulated in all these trips. Is there a thinking of, hey, you know, here's a fascinating book I can put together about, you know, my my journeys with scouts, something like that. I don't know. Any any thoughts, ideas around that, or or you use laser focused then on um, and I know we haven't gotten to this, which I want to, but it sounds like a lot of the training aspect is kind of where you're really um but yeah, any any thoughts on like a book or anything like that? A movie?

SPEAKER_01 19:07

I I don't think that uh we're movie material, but I love this question. So I've actually been working for a while, um a couple years loosely with the idea, and then about a year really diligently on a manuscript for a hybrid memoir that is about a little bit of the van stuff with Scout, but also focused on the like the emotional and the training journey that we both shared to get to this point. So that is like the dream of all dreams for me would be to make that book a reality. Um and it's been weird actually living in the van and we travel at a pretty quick pace. There are so many different ways to do van life. Some people park in one spot, you know, for the maximum 14-day stay limit, and then they go just like a couple miles away and stay again. Um we don't do that. We tend like it's been weird that we've been in the keys for this long. This is by far the longest we've stayed in any one place. So there's this really interesting, like simultaneously living it, habituating to the life. So there are so many things that I just mention casually, like when we meet a new person, and they look at me as if I am an alien because I'm just like used to that now, right? Like that's just my day-to-day. And so I have a hard time figuring out like what is even interesting, like what is interesting just to me? What do I not think is interesting that other people actually do? And then also like having time and space to step back and reflect on some of the different adventures, pathways that we've taken across the country. I often feel like I yearn for a little bit more time to like be removed and really sit with it. Um that's something I've been thinking about a lot, especially that we have been stationary now for two and a half months, which is a very strange feeling.

SPEAKER_00 20:57

And then in that you were telling me earlier in the two and a half months that you're

Hosting A Florida Keys Campground

SPEAKER_00 21:01

stationary down there. What is it you guys are doing down there again?

SPEAKER_01 21:04

Yeah, we're volunteering in one of the state parks down here. So um, our our role is officially campground host. And really what that means is that we're in charge of the campground space that we're staying in. So we get free accommodations, which is this campsite. It does have water and electricity. So I feel like I am living large. This is so luxurious that I don't have to worry about like rationing power and can I use the induction stovetop or not? And like, will we run out of water? You know, I can't take a shower until three days from now when we get to the next water spigot. It's like such luxury here. Um, and in exchange for that free campsite, we clean the bathrooms, pick up around the site, clean up trash on the beach, clean the other campsites as people check in and check out, and are kind of just like around if anybody has um hopefully not an emergency, but you know, if they have like any questions or things like that.

SPEAKER_00 21:59

Very cool. Cool area to get the opportunity to do that in.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

Yeah, I feel so lucky to get to spend the summer here. It's if I look this way, I see the beach from where I'm sitting in the bed of the van. So it's just can't beat it.

SPEAKER_00 22:13

And we're a scout at right now.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

She was up here next to me for quite a while, and then she just jumped down, got a big drink of water, and flopped herself in the hallway so that she can be a little bit um, a little bit cooler, have the air coming in the side door and the back door all at once.

SPEAKER_00 22:31

Gotcha.

Training Lessons For Dogs And Humans

SPEAKER_00 22:32

Um, and then you were touching on uh this earlier, right? The mental health, the journey, the but really the training with scout, and that is that's is that more what you've gotten into with passion and and um taking the successes of some of the trainings and learnings that you know, the journey that you've had with her to help others.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

Yeah, I think that I was both pleasantly surprised, but also overwhelmed when I shared more about our own reactivity journey and also like a lot about my human struggles with it. Um, like I think that that can be a really emotional thing for us as people as well, and that's a factor that's really important to consider, but unfortunately, still often not considered in the dog training world as much as it ought to be. I was surprised but also overwhelmed by how many people related. There are these whole communities for all of these things, and that's such a wonderful thing because it can make you feel connected and supported. Um, I think it can also increase the odds of you comparing yourself to other people. It can increase the number of contradictory voices you're hearing, like giving you exactly opposite training advice, but delivered so confidently that you're just sitting there, like, how do these things fit together? What is the answer? So I've become really passionate about kind of the whole alchemy of like the human journey, the individual dog, the environment that you live in, how all of these things work together to guide your training decisions, what your deal breakers are, like how you even define what a problem is. I think that the internet and just like in general, we throw around words like behavioral problems. And there's often this assumption that like ex behavior is always a problem. And you know, there's a lot of nuance to that. It depends on what you care about, it depends on the emotional root of the behavior, why your dog is performing it, where you live. There's like this whole laundry list of things. Um, it's exhausting sometimes, but I just find it so fulfilling to kind of sit in the middle of that complexity and just like absorb it and then eventually feel confident enough to make decisions like for me and for my individual dog. That was a huge epiphany for me. And I know it isn't for everyone. Some people are already there, and like to you, I say, congrats, that's amazing. But it was this whole process for me to realize that like I didn't have to be embarrassed about certain things and that I could prioritize what I wanted to prioritize, and I could listen to Scout instead of you know, the hundred people on the internet who had never met her but had very loud opinions.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

Right, right. Um yeah, I was saying it's your fur kid at the end of the day, right? Like what what are some of the what are some of the things and it it's been you've been really focused on building up her confidence out in public?

SPEAKER_01 25:36

Yeah, it's been a big one.

SPEAKER_00 25:38

And like how how have you approached that?

SPEAKER_01 25:42

So the way that we initially approached it, um, when we moved to Florida, I'd had her for about a year and a half and was feeling like we were at the point where we could work on that a little bit more. There was this outdoor mall, and because it was Florida, you could sit outside the whole year round. Um, so most mornings a week, actually, I would take her to this outdoor mall. I worked remotely. I would bring my computer and my work with me, use the public Wi-Fi, and I would either place her on the bench next to me on her little travel mat or on the bench below me, depending on how busy it was and where she felt most protected. And we would just sit there for hours. I would reward good decisions that she made. I would step in, you know, if like another dog was trying to run up to us or a cute little kid was trying to run up and just sort of work on showing her that like we could coexist and be calm, and I had her back. I do think if I could do it all over again, there are a lot of things that we did that I that I think were good for us. Um, I think I would have focused more on play earlier. I focused a lot on like, can you be calm? Can you be level-headed in public? And she's a dog who, when she feels overwhelmed, she stresses down and instead of up. So you think of like the really overstimulated, like sort of um like classic Labrador who's like stressed, but they look really, really happy because they're just like zooming around and they can't control themselves. She would do the opposite when she got overwhelmed and she would just kind of like freeze and sit still. And it was easy to mistake her stillness for true calm and comfort in our early years when I knew her a little bit less well. So in hindsight, I wish I had focused on play earlier. Play is like the biggest thing in our life now. If I could do it all over again, we would go to the same environment. But instead of like trying to just keep her calm on the mat, I would be trying to build up clarity in the games that we played together and work on her confidence to tune out the world and play those games with me. Um, for her, that tells me more about her mental state than if she can sit still or not.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

So um, yeah. So the breed is very physically, very active, very mentally intelligent as well, right?

SPEAKER_01 28:04

Very, very.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

So that's good. Yeah, and well, I'll show you. You can probably see I've got uh this shirt I saw I was normal two two Dobermans ago.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

Um, I love that.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

So you you talk about a breed that's very active, super intelligent, too. It's like, man, and they can be a hand, but you know, that intelligence is what really tests you and I, right?

SPEAKER_01 28:27

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 28:28

I I'm curious, what are some of the things she's done to kind of test you and in, you know, this may not be the right thing to say. You know, sometimes you wonder, are they testing you to break you to see what they could get away with? Do you feel moments like that with her?

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Uh I've honestly never felt a moment of seeing what she could get away with. I think because she is just so sensitive and socially soft that Scout's greatest motivation in life is like, how do I appease my humans? Um, and that is like both a lovely trait and also really stressful trait because I feel all of this pressure that like her mental state hinges so much on my mental state. We're so connected in that way. Interesting. But I have definitely felt moments where she is just like too smart for her own good. Like something will happen one time. I mean, one time. One instance out of like thousands of repetitions, and she'll remember that one instance. Um, and sometimes it's really cute. It's like, you know, we took her to play off leash at the baseball diamond at a park near our old house once, literally once. And then every time we walked by this baseball diamond, she would pull us to the door and want to go inside to play. Super adorable, right? It also happened in ways where it was, you know, like a scary thing would happen to her once, and her negativity bias was really strong, and she'd remember that scary thing forever, and it would weigh more in her mind than like the moments that were benign where nothing scary happened. Um, although I do think now that I'm thinking about it, as she's gotten older and like we've lived together longer, and her confidence isn't really an issue anymore. I'm really proud of how far she's come there. There are things she does on occasion just with the two of us, where like, you know, um, we'll tell her to get off the bed and instead she'll go make herself small at the end of the bed. Like, do I really need to leave? Or like, do you just need more space? Or um, you know, we I think it's cute when she begs. So I've always let her beg for food. This is one of those personal decision things. She's able to go away if I tell her to give me space. Um, and like her begging has gotten a little bit more extreme where she's kind of testing, like, you know, she still won't take food out of our hands or off of the fork, but like she'll put her face right next to it and sniff it and be like, is this too much? So I'm glad you asked that question because my first instinct was like, no, she doesn't really test us. But the more I thought about it, there are these cute little ways that she shows that her confidence has increased and like we're kind of in conversation and negotiation with each other.

SPEAKER_00 31:08

That's yeah, that's what I love. Yeah, they're yeah, they they can sometimes they can try to figure out how to outsmart us and we don't think about it. I was like, wait a minute, what the heck could I just do? They just outsmarted me.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

Yeah, yeah, seriously. Yeah, we we do so many things around her. Um, you know, just like the ways that you meld your lives together, and I don't even think about it anymore until we have her around someone new. And then I'm like, oh yeah, they don't have the innate language that the three of us have have developed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:39

So how how does it um how has she, how do you feel she's, you know, having her in your life has made you stronger, you know, you know, inspired you?

SPEAKER_01 31:54

Oh gosh, I mean, like all of the ways I owe her so much. I was 21, I was freshly out of um, I I was engaged actually and called off that engagement. It was a really unhealthy relationship. I adopted her less than a year later. I was in this new relationship, I was in my first job out of college. Like, she really is for me that classic dog that you get in your 20s who is there for all of that growth. Um, I get really emotional when I think about like bringing her home to my first post-college apartment with a roommate, and then like her joining my wedding first dance and like all of these other things that we've shared together. Um, I think the biggest thing that she helped me realize is that like it's okay for things to be really hard. You don't have to be embarrassed of that. I think, especially in the pet world, there's a lot of over-romanticization that's just like pets are great, and like pets are good for your mental health. And like that's true sometimes for some people, but I think that those generalizations can be hurtful. So she's made me a lot more empathetic because I had all of these experiences where I felt isolated when caring for her was really draining to me, and I felt so guilty about that. And then also getting to experience the process of working through that, both on my own and with her. I don't want to say come out the other side because like we'll always have our things. It's not like life is perfect today, but I do feel like we've, you know, I feel like we really have come a long way. Um training her and like figuring out how to fit her into my life and just help her navigate the world was one of the first times in my life that I felt truly challenged. Like one of the first times that I got to practice feeling really out of my depth, really worried that I wasn't good enough, that I just couldn't cut it. And then, you know, being able to get through that both emotionally and logistically. Um, I feel way more capable of handling those sorts of things in the future, either in the dog world or outside of it.

SPEAKER_00 34:09

Love that. Well, the one term you use is empathy. I'm huge. Uh I love that term. So that's great. Yeah, you're right. But to your point, um yeah, it it's you know, not every day is rosy. I mean, we we both, you know, there there's I mean, I you know, we encounter more of the challenge. I mean, I, you know, they wake up, they're excited, they they end the day in satisfaction, whereas yeah, you and I might have a moody day.

SPEAKER_01 34:35

Oh, Scout has moody days too, let me tell you.

SPEAKER_00 34:38

Oh, I love well, okay. Go expand on that. It's a moody day.

SPEAKER_01 34:43

Oh, like I just swear she's some she's just like me and my partner, and that some days she'll just wake up way more excited, way more optimistic, and other days she'll wake up way more prepared, you know, to think that things are gonna go wrong and to need a lot more affirmation and and support. I feel like I really relate to her in that way. Um, or you know, like so again, some of it like she's getting older, she has some hip pain that she has medication for, she has epilepsy. So there's like all of these other factors. Um, so the the physical element, I'm sure, is part of it. But like, you know, there are days where you can pet her in a certain way, or like a stranger can come up to her in a certain way, and she's like, This is fine, today's a great day. And then there are other days where she's like, What the heck?

SPEAKER_00 35:33

Yeah, no, that makes sense. Um, but yeah, I love what you said, empathy, and then it sounds like the other one was just um helping you, you know, grow your skill set in in um, I'm not gonna say social isolation. I hit somebody else that had mentioned that, but it it's it's um, you know, making you not, you know, maybe fearless is is a word, but um more confident to kind of take on things, whereas before you might have been like, yeah, I don't know, I don't think I can do that, but because of scout, like I'm gonna give this a shot. I think I can do it, right?

SPEAKER_01 36:11

Yeah, yeah. I really like the word resilience for both of us. Yeah. Like I feel like I feel like when we met each other, neither of us was a very resilient creature. And now I feel like most of the time, like, like we can figure it out.

SPEAKER_00 36:27

Love it. That's and I know we're getting close to the end of this podcast. That's that's not that I want to end it right away on that one, but that's actually a great way to close. Resiliency.

Resilience Aging And Scout’s Next Chapter

SPEAKER_00 36:38

Um but yeah, as we get close to the end here, I mean, what's what what's next with with your journeys?

SPEAKER_01 36:47

Oh, what a good question. I was just journaling a bit this morning about how, in some ways, I feel like Scout is retired. I know that we don't usually use that word for pet dogs the same way that we do for sport dogs or working dogs. Um, but there's something especially about this experience being stationary in the keys and just kind of like, you know, whatever the dog version of Margaritaville is, just watching her kind of like do this sunbathing. And um I feel like I want to hang on to that for as long as as we're able to with her. I don't think we're gonna move out of the van anytime soon. Um, we've decided that Scout loves living like this so much that this will be her final home. We'll we'll stay in it for sure until she leaves us. Um, maybe longer, who knows? We all love it. And really just trying to soak up the fact that we get to spend most days together, just kind of like moving through the world with with an ease that I think our past selves would not have believed possible. Just want to keep that up.

SPEAKER_00 37:54

Yeah, I love that. Well, I love your your play on the Margarita Margaritaville for Pats.

SPEAKER_01 37:59

Um minus the like problematic um undertones, I guess I should specify.

SPEAKER_00 38:06

I I get where you're going on that one.

SPEAKER_01 38:08

Um the positive version.

SPEAKER_00 38:11

Too many margaritas.

unknown 38:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:15

Um like the healthy version, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:17

Yeah, yeah, no, but I'm I'm with you. I love that retired life. That's that's that's awesome too, and the resiliency. But yeah, no, I um I I appreciate you being on on the show today, and and uh just you know, we'll keep in touch, have fun watching some of the journeys, you guys that are there in Fort Lauderdale and just really not Fort Lauderdale, uh Key West, the Keys. Not that Fort Lauderdale is very far. I don't know where Fort Lauderdale came from. Um what's what's next after the the Keys, or we kind of are just leaving things up in the air right now?

SPEAKER_01 38:50

We end up back in the Midwest a lot because a lot of our college friends and um my parents and my in-laws still live in Wisconsin. So that's where we're heading after this. We've got a couple like a string of exciting events. There's retirement parties and birthday parties and uh a baby shower. So we'll we'll be back in Wisconsin for a little bit at least and then see what happens from there.

SPEAKER_00 39:12

All right. Scout will be right below beside you with all those events. Definitely retirement parties, definitely not you. You're way too young for that.

SPEAKER_01 39:21

Yeah, yeah. My my parents just both retired, so we gotta celebrate them.

SPEAKER_00 39:26

That's awesome. Well, again, thanks for being on the show

Final Thanks And Share Your Story

SPEAKER_00 39:29

today. Definitely want to get a bunch of great pictures from you to share with the the listeners. And you know, for those listeners on this show, maybe they've gotten inspired up to to get that camper van and go do some traveling, right? Um and then, you know, uh you listeners reach out, let's get you on here. Let's let's you know, share more of your stories, you know, similar to what Haley's doing, or just even if it's staying put like you know, in your own backyard, there's always adventures with that, right? Um, but uh again, thanks, Haley. I appreciate you being on the episode today.

SPEAKER_01 40:05

Yeah, thank you so much for thinking of me and having me. And you've been a really great host. I relish the chance to just kind of ramble on about my dog.

SPEAKER_00 40:14

No, absolutely. Don't go anywhere just yet.