Emotional Growth
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How one alien and one trail of trust taught me what canine communication could look like A Movie About Connection There’s a moment in E.T. that still gives me chills, even after all these years. Not the flying bicycle. Not the glowing finger. It’s the part where E.T. points to the sky, touches his chest,…
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We’re thrilled to invite you to share your dog’s journey, through the lens of a favorite book, movie, or TV show, in our new dog story contest. Just like Lady Priscilla reminds us of Yentl, Dead Poets Society, and Jonathan Livingston Seagull, we want to hear which characters have mirrored your own dog’s transformation. This…
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Two six-year-old girls, one discarded dog, and a shared impossible IQ Like Sheila in One Child, by Torey Hayden, Lady Priscilla didn’t come forward at first. She stayed hidden beneath the table, not because she lacked intelligence—but because the world hadn’t yet earned her trust. She wasn’t aggressive. Wasn’t loud. Wasn’t wild or out of…
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Like Barbra Streisand in the movie Yentl, Lady Priscilla stepped carefully, nose lifted to catch the wind. The air smelled like everything she’d never known—salt and distance and sky. Her paws shifted in the sand, testing the give beneath her toes. One small shell crunched. She paused, curious, uncertain, breathing in long and slow like…
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Sometimes, when Lady Priscilla flops into a Lay (our cue for “down”) with too much flair or strings together a combo of tricks no one asked for, we catch ourselves grinning. It’s not disobedience… not really. It’s declaration. Like Haley in the Stick It movie, she’s showing us she knows the rules well enough to…
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Some dogs grow up too fast. But what if they get a second chance to grow up again—this time with joy? A happy puppyhood for rescue dogs is possible, even when they’re already grown. Lady Priscilla didn’t come to us as a floppy-eared baby with a waggy tail and a teething ring. She was two…
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Sometimes, when Lady Priscilla leaps onto the agility table and stands tall, we’re struck by an uncanny vision. A beloved teacher in an old film, perched on a desk to challenge his students’ perspectives. Or the students at the end of Dead Poets Society, standing on their desks chanting “O Captain, My Captain” in solidarity.…
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Sometimes, when Lady Priscilla stands at the top of a hill and surveys the world like it belongs to her, I can almost hear the wind whispering through feathers instead of fur. She isn’t flying — not exactly — but in her own way, she embodies the true meaning of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. When I…
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When we first brought Lady Priscilla home, the shelter described her as “shy but sweet.” That was accurate. What we didn’t realize—what we couldn’t have realized—was how deeply shut down she truly was, or how much patience rescue dog recovery would require. She spent the entire ride home curled into a tight ball in the…
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Before she was a service dog in training, Lady Priscilla was a 48-pound ball of anxiety. This is her origin story—and what we learned about bringing home a rescue dog. I really, really wanted a dog. Growing up, we always had animals—lizards, rats, cats, even a rabbit at one point—but my childhood dog, Trapper, was…