Facing My Fears

FACING MY FEARS
In preparation for our vacation, I decided the day before we left, Brady and I should have “mommy/puppy day of fun.” He seems to enjoy those days, so I thought it would be a nice treat for him before we left.
Starting out our day of fun was a trip to the Nolensville dog park. Upon arrival we notice that no other dogs are there, which seems to be a common factor in our trips to the Nolensville Dog Park. We walk in and I let him off leash to run around and sniff. He seems to enjoy that more than playing with other dogs anyway.
As I am sitting there, and Brady is sniffing around, another car pulls up and girl about my age gets out. She opens the back door to her car and out pops out a pit bull that is exactly the same color as the one that attacked Brady and I a little over a year ago. I got so nervous and anxious all of the sudden. Up until that moment, I had no idea that I was carrying around a fear of it happening again.
My first thoughts were “she’s not bringing that dog in here, is she?” Sure enough she entered the dog park with her pit bull. The dog ran over to me and Brady and I felt myself stiffen up in fear. I tried to make myself relax because the last thing I wanted was Brady to sense that fear in me and react to the dog by trying to protect me.
The pit ended up just sniffing him, and she ran off to sniff the rest of the park. The girl came over and we started talking and I found out she had her since she was a puppy and that she had been socialized with dogs consistently. She was a super sweet girl, and she didn’t even mind when Brady decided to drink some water out of her bowl.
The thing that bothers me the most is I realized how much fear I had from that incident. It amazes me how a traumatic incident can affect you even a year later. For some people, traumatic incidents affect them for years. I think it was good for me to see that the pit bull was sweet, and playful and only wanted to play with Brady. He had no interest in her whatsoever. He just wanted to sniff the park.
We stayed at the park for about thirty more minutes, waiting to see if any other dogs would show up to play, but no one else came while we were there. Brady and I left and went back home, and then continued our mommy/puppy day of fun with a two mile walk with our neighbor and her two dogs, Emma and Indy.
I have never had a fear of dogs until the incident last April 2009. I think it was good for me to see that you can’t group a fear into one particular type of dog, one particular type of person, or one particular place where something happened. You have to face your fears, even if you are shaking in your tennis shoes while you are doing it.