This episode of It's Going to be Okay is presented by the Hartford.
The Hartford is a leading group benefits provider helping to simplify employee benefits by
making them more personal and easier to understand because using your employee benefits shouldn't
be so complicated.
Learn more at the Hartford.com slash benefits.
I'm Nora McNerny and it's going to be okay, which is hard for me to say let alone believe
because I am depressed.
But on the advice of my therapist, I am searching for one okay thing about every day and bringing
it to you.
It's going to be okay is a new daily podcast filled with okay things from me, my friends
and from you.
Find it's going to be okay wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Jordan Turgin and it's going to be okay.
It's a truth universally acknowledged that the world's population can be divided into
two groups.
People like me who can't so much as look at a dog while out in public without commenting
on how floofy he is and everyone else in the world.
Dog people just get it.
Our first family dog more closely resembled your average house cat in the way she regarded
her humans, which is to say not much.
She would fetch and do tricks like shake your hand and balance on her hind legs.
She wasn't a cuddler.
She wasn't loving or notably sweet.
She was notably an escape artist.
You'd be forgiven for thinking we were horrible people for how eagerly she'd bolt from us
the second she got the chance.
If I left the front door open for a moment too long or if my sister forgot to make sure
the backyard gate clicked shut behind her, this dog was gone.
Poof.
I spent several nights of my childhood in my pajamas in the backseat of my mom's car with
the window down scouring the neighborhood looking for that little Houdini wannabe.
Our second family dog was a runt and born with a heart defect that meant she'd never
be a show dog like her original owners intended.
But what she lacked in star quality she made up for in affection.
She rarely left our sight only to go sniff out a chipmunk and always came running at my
mom's whistle.
At night she'd start out in my parents' bedroom cuddling with my mom until my dad came to
bed and made her leave so he could rightfully claim his own spot under the covers.
Then she'd come to me, keeping me company while I finished high school math homework
or more likely chatted with friends and crushes on AOL instant messenger.
She'd later sprawl on her side and press her back against the side of my leg as I slept.
So I always knew she was there.
She didn't visit my sister's room but that's just because my sister slept with the door
fully closed like she learned in fire safety class whereas I needed the hallway light on
and my door cracked open in order to sleep for much longer in my life than I care to
admit.
I recently spent a week on the beach, my first swimsuit vacation in more than 15 years.
My body never adjusted to the four hour time change and neither did my friends, which meant
we were sipping coffee with our toes in the sand by seven each morning.
Crime time for humpback whale sightings, pink sunrises, and dog watching.
There was Charlie, the lab with flecks of white around his nose.
He embled up to us one morning and sat at our feet just long enough to receive a few
well-deserved head scratches before wandering off to greet his next set of fans.
His human wasn't far behind.
There was the Scottish Terrier slash Docsend mix, a scruffy black dog that was somehow
the weirdest and also cutest thing I'd ever seen.
Unfortunately, I set that cute part out loud though to which his late middle aged owner
said, and the dog ain't so bad either, huh?
But I knew on the fourth morning of our trip that I'd found my vacation dog.
Vacation dog, like, you know, the dog that makes you think I should have stopped one
of these when I get home and you forget the part where you have neither the fenced in
yard nor the square footage to keep a furry friend from getting bored.
This furry friend was a border collie?
Oh, maybe a shit-land sheep dog?
I'm honestly horrible at breeds.
I don't even know if those are similar.
And at first my friend and I worried that maybe he'd misplaced his person.
His face was stretched into one of those infectious, permanent smiles, tongue hanging
out of his mouth as he trotted back and forth right where the ocean met the sand.
I crouched low at one point, extending a hand in that very desperate but trying to play
a cool way that screams, I love dogs, please come say hi to me, I promise I'm a nice lady.
Instead this dog, the roo himself into the ocean.
And any dog person knows that the most painful kind of rejection is the one you get from
a dog.
I felt low, betrayed, unworthy.
My friend and I had seen dozens of dogs playing in the waves already that week, but this one
kept going, swimming farther and farther and farther away from shore, until all you could
see was the top of his furry head bobbing up and down in the water.
Um, is he going to drown?
We asked each other.
And I'm pretty sure our facial expressions were the equivalent of that cringing emoji
because apparently we forgot how easily we ourselves had floated in that same salty sea
water.
Eventually, the dog turned direction and began swimming parallel to the shoreline, the same
way we'd seen open water swimmers do during their morning workouts.
And when he approached one particular oncoming swimmer, my friend and I gasped because without
lifting her head or her snorkel, the swimmer reached out with a wet-suited arm and padded
the dog on the head.
Once reassured that he was in fact a very, very good boy, the dog turned around again,
this time leading the way.
I wondered as this woman swam if she could see her friend's fluffy feet kicking along
ahead of her, encouraging her to keep going, letting her know he was there with her as
she pushed against the current.
The same way our family dog used to at night when the stress of school and sports and just
being a teenager with a lot of messy feelings kept me wide awake.
They continued on like this, the rest of the half-mile walk back to our place.
The dog swimming ahead a bit, then circling back to check in on his human and get a pat
on the head.
The two never leaving each other aside for too long, but trusting each other to keep moving
forward at their own pace.
I'm Jordan Turgeon and it's going to be okay.
It's going to be okay is an independent little podcast from your friendly little neighborhood,
independent podcast makers, Feelings and Co.
It was produced by Claire McInerney and Megan Palmer, but our bigger team the entire bench
is Marcel Malakiebu, Jordan Turgeon, Eugene Kidd, Larissa Witcher and myself, Nora McInerney.
Our theme music is by Secret Audio.
This
episode of It's Going to Be Okay was brought to you by the Hartford.
For too long, the insurance industry has been using terms and descriptions that make understanding
your employee benefits next to impossible.
The Hartford wants to change that.
They're a leading group benefits provider that uses easy to understand language to describe
their products, so normal people like us know what we're really getting when we choose
our benefits.
Learn more at the Hartford.com slash benefits.