I didn’t know how I knew how to train my dog. That was the thing that triggered the cascade. How was I training my dog? It was a snarky comment from a friend that turned me on to the question of how I was able to train her at all.

Our friendship was strained at the time it happened. I was newly wary of her affect on me, and I think she sensed that but wasn’t interested in asking about it any further. I needed more space, but didn’t know how to hurt peoples’ feelings for the sake of my own health yet. She was a close friend until I awkwardly ended our relationship when I realized I was not able to be myself around her. It was my own fear that got in the way. I assumed she would judge me when she found out I was sin. Not sinful. But sin itself. The embodiment of it.

I had recently adopted Ink, and we ran into my friend and her family at the neighborhood bus stop. Her children were a little fearful of dogs and I was doing my best to maintain polite conversation and keep our rough and tumble puppy from absolutely bowling over the timid kids. Her son playfully made I’ll get you eye contact, and in attempt to lower the excitement level I told him that making eye contact can be threatening in the dog kingdom. A signal to fight. If I remember correctly, I said it nicely, as an explanation for why he should stop what he was doing. “Is it?” my friend asked. I don’t remember how I answered that. In fact, writing this now, I’m worried it might not be true. But that is true for many carnivorous mammals, yes? Whatever. I said something to that effect. I explained how she was very young (only a few months old) and we still needed work on training her to meet people appropriately.[1] She asked me how I’d do that and I went through the basic steps for training a puppy to do anything. And she said “Oh, is that all?”

Reader, I know she was making fun of me in that moment… now. I did not, however, know it then. I was anxious about the situation with the delicate skin of children and the razors that are puppy teeth happening at the end of the leash, while at the same time rattling off God knows what about dog training that some dormant part of me picked up from Caesar Milan. I heard her words, but not her meaning.

What I offered as an answer to her mocking question was an apology for myself. How could I have been so naive, of course, that’s not all there is too it. I’d made it sound too easy. My reaction was to belittle my own intelligence and apologize for existing. I always want to say it was something less than that. I want to think I was apologizing for being a know-it-all, or for skipping steps, but that isn’t what I was sorry for. I was sorry for being there at all. That she had to spend her time talking to sin like me.

Now, I am sorry I used to carry that with me everywhere.

Anyway, her comment, my shame spiral, and subsequent dissection of my knowledge on the subject led me to question how I knew how to train dogs at all. At the time I can tell you that I honestly had no idea. I didn’t remember training any of my previous dogs. In fact, I couldn’t remember much of my time with them at all. But undeniably, the new puppy was being trained. I was performing the magic, but I couldn’t tell you how the trick worked.

Have you ever lived in a place with old wallpaper? I have. Our house was riddled with wallpaper when we bought it. I can tell you from experience that the absolute worst place for wallpaper is the bathroom. There is nothing worse than sitting there with nothing to do, staring at a tattered seam with a juicy triangular corner of paper practically begging you to grab hold and rip. The fact that I knew how to train dogs but didn’t know how I knew was like one of those juicy triangles. I had to see what was behind it. I pulled on the triangle and found a labyrinth underneath.

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[1] I never did complete this mission. She is a total spaz when she’s with people and they are her favorite thing in the whole world. Nobody seems to mind.