Unconvential Values

17.11.2024 Some Unconventional Values Blog Entry 12

Not everyone is going to understand how I show up in my life, and that is okay. I give Spirit as much freedom as I possibly can and have chosen to leave the online service dog community for the sake of her quality of life. While some may call this unethical, Spirit and I are established and known in our community as a service dog team. We have passed our provincial exam, flown internationally, and live our lives as a functional team.

Spirit meets the flight crew enroute to Germany with a layover in Dublin!

That being said, my values lie deep in free choice, love, and anti-suppression. To be clear, I do have standards. She is always kept clean and is not allowed to bother or disrupt spaces. Within our daily life, I care more about her well-being than about our reputation. So she’s a bit silly, a bit too friendly, and not perfect — I don’t care. If you have a problem with that, stay out of my lane.

At the end of the day, she is here to support me and help me thrive, and she is a living, breathing creature with her own needs and desires. I will never use a prong collar or electric collar, and I do not raise my voice at her except when absolutely necessary. If someone wants to say hello to her, that does not really bother me. She is a part of my life and comes everywhere with me.

My life values lie in love, kindness, and creating community. Spirit loves people, people love her, and I love them. Why is that a bad thing? She isn’t hurting anyone by being a social butterfly, and I am not hurting anyone by being myself. I am open and loving — why does that have to be a bad thing?

Of course I always make sure the kids are accompanied by parents first, but here is Spirit helping me reconnect to the world in a way that makes me feel like I can do some good. Why do I have to stop living in a way that makes sense for me because of other's perceptions?

And yet, it is sometimes this very nature of being open and loving that gets me in trouble.

Honestly, I just want to be good. I want to be kind, giving, considerate, respectful, hardworking, self-assured, and confident. So why do I still find myself getting angry, being petty, or in the middle of drama? I just want peace. I want to enjoy a walk with my dog without caring what other people think. I want to make friends without worrying about ulterior motives. I want to love freely and openly, without the constant fear that I will accidentally offend someone when all I wanted was connection.

I carry a lot of shame, and I wonder if everyone does. There are so many mistakes I have made when all I wanted was for all of us to get along. But I suppose that is life. We keep going. We maintain a positive attitude. We stand up for what we believe in.

Spirit and I do our nightly round to the Mcdonald's next to our house at closing, they give her some treats that would have gone in the garbage and tell me how they miss home.

I love my life with Spirit. If she wasn't me service dog , I would be lost. I also love our walks — her sniffing freely, making a hundred friends, going to the dog park, enjoying the sun, and not caring about meeting impossibly high standards of perfection. She is calm, polite, listens well, is under control, gentle, respectful, and non-destructive. What more is expected of us?

I refuse to force her into rigid, performative obedience — like a constant competition heel — just to make the internet happy. How is that good for my mental health?

I left the service dog community because I found it deeply toxic and full of hostility. I witnessed rhetoric centered on purity, perfection, and hierarchy — ideas rooted in authoritarian thinking. There was aggression toward any sign of weakness or imperfection, and an unspoken competition over who had it worst. We all have struggles. Every single person on this planet is facing something we cannot see.

The most we can ask of one another is to be allowed to live peacefully.

In the online service dog world, I found a competitive environment where people claimed to support one another while quietly waiting for mistakes. I saw situations where animal welfare was compromised — sometimes in the name of important roles, and often in service of ego. I still grapple with the ethics of dog ownership, but I love my life with my dogs deeply. I love my friends. I love the way they have helped me become kinder, gentler, more physically active, and more present.

Life is short. It may not be perfect. I will make mistakes. But I do not want to give up the thing I love most, or love her incompletely, or take away more of her freedom than necessary to meet expectations I don’t always agree with.

Yes, training a service dog takes work. You must put in the hours. All I am asking is that we allow space to laugh and smile along the way. My friends’ guide dogs have silly moments too. The world becomes more loving when we make room for that.

We share the love with some other student's living in residence, we all miss home and face fear in an uncertain world.

When it comes to mental health, perhaps the antidote to trauma, depression, and suffering is not more harshness, ego, obsession, or perfectionism — but more gentleness, self-awareness, resilience, and acceptance of life’s cycles. Discipline and focus matter deeply, but even they have limits.

In many communities — whether centered on service dogs, politics, identity, or hardship — I felt pressure to surrender my entire identity to belong. If you were different, you were not welcome. I lost myself trying to meet expectations, afraid to make mistakes, trapped in a narrative of sickness and deficiency.

I have stopped chasing approval. I have real problems to deal with — my career, education, bills, health, and relationships. I have real friends. I have a short life that I want to fill with memories of laughter, growth, and meaning — not criticism and fear.

I want to succeed in school. I want a family. I want to fall in love with someone who loves me back for the rest of our lives. I want to be a mother, a business owner, a friend, and a leader. I want to make the world kinder, more patient, and more peaceful. I want to help children who lack opportunity and find solutions that allow people to live fully with those they love.

I want to overcome my flaws and loosen my grip on ego. I want to publish stories that restore hope. Despite the harm humanity has caused, I still believe in us. We have also created art, built communities, survived unimaginable struggles, and loved deeply.

Even if others do not understand me, I will keep choosing hope. I believe we can do things through love. I believe we can live peacefully and mindfully. I know I may be wrong. I know conflict, rules, and institutions exist. But I will continue choosing hope anyway. After all, this is my life and I have to lead with love for me.

With some quirky habits and silly ways of being,

-Julia & Spirit