Yesterday I house sat for a friend of mine who has four dogs. You should have seen me trying to dry them off when they came in out of the rain last night. You should have also seen me stumble out of bed this morning at six-thirty to let them outside. No, I take that back. You shouldn’t have. It wasn’t pretty. I wasn’t pretty. This boy needs his beauty rest. Which I got eventually. After letting the dogs outside, I went back to sleep.

When I woke back up at eleven-thirty, I was refreshed. What a lovely day, I thought. Then I realized I’d forgotten to put a tracker on the youngest dog’s collar. Well shit, I thought as I leaped out of bed. What if she’s run off? (My friend lives in the country.) Thankfully, she hadn’t. However, despite my best efforts, she wouldn’t come back to the house or even let me near her to put the tracker on. For over three hours I periodically went outside and tried to approach the dog. Every time she ran off. Even treats didn’t do the trick. Nothing worked. My friend sent me a text and said to scoop her some canned dog food into a bowl, but even that failed. Granted, it attracted the three other dogs and even a cat, but not the dog I needed it to. Seriously, I might as well have been trying to catch a bunny rabbit with a butterfly net.

I know people like this, who run away when you try to connect with them. My therapist says the technical term is “avoidant attachment,” meaning they avoid making (even healthy) attachments. She says if you want to drive yourself crazy, try caring about someone like this. (It’s hell.) But back to the dog. Finally, I tried a different approach. Slowly, I walked down the long driveway, ignoring her. (She followed.) Then I sat down in a chair, still ignoring her. The next thing I knew, she was right beside me, panting. Then she just sat there as I petted her and attached the tracker. What the hell? For three hours she runs away from me, then the second I stop giving a shit, she’s practically up in my lap.

As my therapist says, indifference is the great stimulus to wanting.

Think about that.

After this encounter, I put the above-mentioned bowl of dog food on the porch. And just like that, the dog that had given me so much trouble and avoided all my begging, pleading, and bribing, was on the porch licking the bowl clean. I swear. Some creatures have to have EVERYTHING on THEIR terms.

Clearly, I’m not the dog whisperer. And whereas trying to get my friend’s dog to come near me was frustrating, I realized it wasn’t personal. For her, it was probably a game. Or perhaps she doesn’t like her tracker and remembered the last time (a couple weeks ago) I put in on her. This morning I listened to a podcast about trauma, and one of the speakers said that we (as humans) often avoid others because some part of us is afraid. Some part of us thinks, I’ve trusted people before and got seriously hurt. I’m not going to let that happen again! So we avoid attachments. In order to protect ourselves, we build walls.

Personally, I used to get a lot of shit for my walls. My friends were always nice about it, but they’d joke that I’d only let them so close, that I kept them at a distance. I’m sure I still do this at times. Old habits die hard. Plus, I have this thing for boundaries. But my therapist says boundaries aren’t walls, they’re bridges. (Isn’t that cute?) That is, walls simply keep people out; boundaries inform others how they can get close to us. They’re like the rules of board game. They say, “This is how we can play together.”

Personally, I think boundaries should be taught in school or Sunday school or wherever teaching is offered. For me, they’ve been much more useful than Algebra ever has been. (Sorry, math teachers.) But seriously, boundaries get talked about a lot as a concept, but they’re rarely practiced or properly modeled. My therapist says they scare people. Maybe because people hear “boundaries” and think walls. But the two are vastly different. Plus, think about this–walls work both ways. That is, sure, they keep others from getting in (phew, you can’t get hurt), but that also means you can’t get out. You’ve got all this love and compassion inside you (don’t tell me you don’t), and there’s nowhere for it to go. Because it’s trapped. Because you’ve built this great barrier. Because, you know, you’re an island.

That’s what I used to think. I am a rock, I am an island. Like the Simon and Garfunkel song. This thinking, of course, was utter bullshit. We’re meant for connection. My friend’s dog showed me that today. She wanted that dog food just as badly as I wanted her to have it (I was tired of holding it). But she needed to feel safe first. She needed me sitting down first. That was her boundary. That was her bridge. I think we’re all looking for this–a bridge, a way to connect–with nearly everyone. I’m not saying this is easy. It’s tough to invite people in, even on your terms. It’s tough to trust people. Because people can hurt you. But people can also heal you.