When I Adopted a Dog with Anxiety, It Changed My Entire Life (Exclusive Essay)

I thought getting a dog would be fun. I thought it would be a wholesome, joyful addition to my life. We've all heard the truisms about getting a dog. It's a big responsibility! You have to feed them, walk them! Take them to the vet! I was prepared for all of that. I was in my twenties, and living a full, exciting, busy life living in New York City. Coming from the quiet, suburban life in Australia in which I'd grown up, it was like living a dream: I had somehow managed to get a (junior, lowly) job at a prestigious art gallery despite having no formal training in art, I had a (tiny, fifth floor walkup, speckled with mold but rent stabilized and therefore invaluable) apartment in Lower Manhattan, a packed social life and a serious boyfriend, Aaron. I had lofty goals for my career I wanted to pursue. I'd managed to build a whole adult life. The only thing missing was a dog — they were so fun, so cute — so I thought I'd get that, too. How hard could it be? Well, it turned out I was completely and utterly unprepared for what happened next. The rescue had told me some vague things about how he was 'a little difficult,' but I didn't think too much of it. Soon after Freddie was dropped off by the rescue organization, I discovered that he had some severe behavior problems. Most notably, he couldn't be left alone. Not for an hour, not even for a minute. If we tried leaving him alone, a switch would flip, and he'd transform from a sweet, docile, affectionate (read: clingy) pet into a dog-shaped thrum of angst. It wasn't just barking, pacing or scratching at the door. If we left him alone, Freddie would escalate until he was doing alarming things like chewing on his tail and limbs. It was absolutely excruciating to watch. He had separation anxiety, a condition I'd never heard of, and a bad case of it. I was shocked and confronted by Freddie's behavior, and I didn't know what to do. Before Freddie arrived, I had never really spent much time thinking about the affective states or interior lives of nonhuman animals. I thought of myself as a person who 'loved animals,' but the truth is that I really knew nothing. Freddie. Anna Heyward Had I known more about Freddie's condition, I might have given up right away; understood that I was out of my depth. Instead, armed with my own naivete, I started doing everything I could to 'fix' Freddie. I contacted a string of dog trainers and worked through the confusing, often conflicting advice I got. I asked my boyfriend to move in with me so that Freddie would never be left alone, and I started taking Freddie to work with me, or skipping work or changing my schedule since working remotely wasn't an option. Freddie impacted every realm of my life: my work suffered and I became an unreliable employee and colleague, my social life was effectively non-existent and my boyfriend started to quietly resent being a prisoner in the apartment to Freddie's anxiety. I did everything I could think of, but I was swimming against the tide. I loved Freddie, and I wanted to help him, and I should be able to, right? He was just a dog, and I was a human, so I was supposed to have all the answers. I started feeling terrified and anxious at the possibility of leaving him alone, dreading the pain and terror that it inflicted on him. I bought hundreds of books, took classes and generally lost interest in everything that wasn't Freddie. If I was awake, I was probably thinking about him. I thought that if I worked hard enough, I would be able to 'solve' him. This made me, I'm told, pretty hard to be around. But the tiny gains Freddie was able to make were hard-won, and meant everything to me. Even with all the effort, progress was extremely slow. His ability to be alone increased in tiny increments — I was ecstatic when we got to 90 seconds. It had taken hundreds of hours of training and the complete rearrangement of my life, and of Aaron's life. My relationship with Aaron buckled, and then started to break. I received formal warnings at work. My family tried to intervene. I stopped writing completely, and my notebooks, previously filled with ideas for stories I wanted to write and drafts I wanted to work on, were filled exclusively with notes about Freddie. Author Anna Heyward with a furry friend. Anna Heyward If had any chance of helping Freddie, I had to pursue it singlemindedly, no matter how bad it felt or how difficult things got. The idea of Freddie's suffering was so frightening to me that I dismantled my life to avoid it. Despite all my best efforts, things didn't work out with Freddie in the way I hoped they would. Instead, Freddie inadvertently changed the trajectory of my life and career. In the years since, I have studied to become an animal trainer and completed a Masters of Science in animal behavior. I felt like I needed to gain a better understanding of where Freddie's strange, difficult, heart-rending behavior came from, what missteps I had taken, and if I ever could have prevented it. While Freddie's behavior was complex, if I had done things differently from the beginning, the outcome might have been different. Living With Freddie by Anna Heyward. Random House It struck me repeatedly how little we know about the creatures we live with. More than anything, I wanted people to know Freddie's story and to understand dogs like him better. The experience of living with Freddie, as well as the learning that's taken place since, changed the way I see the world and other human beings (including myself) in unexpected ways. Need your next page-turner? See which books our editors can't put down with our People Who Read newsletter — plus get PEOPLE News. Living with Freddie by Anna Heyward comes out Sept. 8 and is available now for preorder, wherever books are sold.