"As Long as the Dogs Are Happy I'll Be Happy" - The Magic Pivot

Backyard in Chicago

I said the title of this piece many times after receiving the news that we would need to find a new home. Being a renter with three big dogs can complicate the moving process when it comes to, well, just about everything.

While our former landlord allowed and tolerated our dogs, he did not create much of a relationship with them. He lived on the property attached to the back of the house we rented from him. However, he never asked for any monetary increases as our household increased in size and did replace the fence between the driveway and our front yard so he could walk by without triggering Teddy’s anxiety (this was more for him than Teddy, but it did solve something that for a moment was pretty tense).

The thought of having to ask someone else’s permission to live on their property with our dogs was not a happy one. I could feel my anxiety increasing every time it entered my consciousness.

The dogs had a pretty solid routine in Ojai which included frequent visits to the river bottom, allowing them plenty of time and space to express themselves and tire themselves out. Jon would take them a few times weekly, typically while I was working.

The thought of them losing this was a sad and worrisome one.

It was time to employ the magic pivot.

“Call Theresa and see if she has an apartment open,” the thought dropped into my head. Too much in a state of disorientation and fear, I assumed it was my anxiety speaking.

Later that day I started writing about all of the magic that took us to Theresa and Vasken’s building in the first place over twenty-one years ago as a way to reconnect me with the magic of finding one of the most wonderful homes we’d ever lived in.

Again, the thought of calling Theresa appeared in the ethers around me and made its way into my mind. Again, I dismissed it as “ridiculous” even as I was starting to feel the truth that our time in Ojai was ending. We’d need to open ourselves to the whole world outside that valley and more importantly outside California.

I felt my grief, fully. No bypass. No magical thinking. The loss was happening. I tended to myself without allowing myself to overstay in the mud puddle of my feelings. I felt the moment when it arrived and pivoted. It’s just a slight turn of the head/heart, the pivot, fueled by the knowledge that if I release my attachment to that which I want to hold onto something else more joyful will appear.

It’s been decades of learning how to employ the magic pivot, and I am not always as adept as I was during this move. I think I first came to understand it fully due to the empty shelf at Trader Joe’s where my favorite brand of vegan butter should have been sitting. The knowledge that they would no longer be carrying it sank in as I could see that the label with the SKU had been removed from the lip of the rack. I asked an employee anyway, still holding on.

Nope, they were going to make their own (it’s not nearly as good in my opinion).

Something like this used to have the ability to send me into a not-very-good place in the past. This time, however, I caught myself right before the wallowing was about to start, took a breath, and pivoted, just knowing that I would find something better or that the one I wanted would show up in another place at a lower price. Plus, come on, it’s just vegan butter!

It did. Just a few days later. There it sat in another store at a lower price. I would have missed it if a piece of me were still standing in Trader Joe’s staring at the empty shelf.

I bookmarked it in my consciousness and have used it again and again since, recognizing the power in the simplicity of the process, grateful for the opportunity to learn it on something as inconsequential as a favorite food brand.

When I asked Theresa right before publishing my piece about meeting them for the first time if they had an apartment open after she’d already said, “You can come and stay here if you need to.” Her response was, “As a matter of fact we do. Helena is moving out on December 8th leaving that apartment empty, and it can be yours for as short or as long as you need it.”

“You know we have three dogs now,” I cautioned.

“Yes!! Bring them! Helena is taking her dog with her and we’ll be without dogs here for the first time in forever!”

Ten days after being told we’d need to leave our home, on 11/11, we suddenly had a viable option, an option better in many ways than we could have imagined for us and the dogs.

Then, as is often the case, history repeated with Theresa saying, “Just think about it. We are not actively looking for renters and are planning on Air B & B’ing it. It’ll be fully furnished and you can arrive when you need to and stay for as long as you want.”

Life was moving us, it was clear, and this is the beauty and power of the magic pivot taking shape and form.

I thought for sure that Jon would not at all want to head here, a return to the city of our origins, and yet when I shared with him what Theresa had offered he teared up as we both felt flooded with relief. It’s one thing to find a home, it’s another to find a home with people who love and want you and want your dogs.

Thoughts of their happiness continued to hound me. They were rural dogs and moving them to an urban environment was something I was not sure how they would manage. I handed my worries off to their faerie helpers and pivoted again, away from my attachments to their yard, the river, the beach, and the trails, and opened us all up to something even better finding us in Chicago.

Here they are, at the most fabulous off-leash dog park beyond my imaginings a mere thirty-five minutes from our new/old home in the city. As soon as I expressed my concerns about their needs on social media multiple people messaged me with information about the Lake County Forest Preserves’ off-leash dog areas. There are five of them, all less than an hour from us, each fully fenced with forty-plus acres of beauty and magic for the dogs to romp in. They have already made new doggie friends.

Zoey, Teddy, & Sookie at Prairie Wolf Off-Leash Dog Area

Ojai has one official off-leash dog park. It is one acre of mulched and grassy area located within a county park on the east end of town. We stopped going there years ago due to lots of drama (the human kind), Teddy’s anxiety, and Sookie being attacked there as a puppy.

I lobbied a city council person for a while for another dog park somewhere in the valley, but nothing ever came of it. So we did as many people do, took the pack to the river bottom and let them run off-leash there.

To find my intention for a legally sanctioned off-leash area for them that is thousands of times better than the dog park in Ojai manifesting itself here in the Chicago area is something I could not have dreamed of, would not have even thought to dream of. This is how the magic pivot can go. Sometimes the fulfillment appears in a few days or a week and sometimes it shows up ten years down the road.

Sometimes it’s exactly the thing you imagined and sometimes it’s beyond your wildest dreams.

Currently, the dogs are very, very happy and so are we.

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