Niki’s story had a real impact on me. It gave me a perspective I had not considered. And it changed my behaviour.

Niki’s story starts with her getting a beautiful new puppy recently. A German Shepherd called Lexi.

When Niki began socialising Lexi at a local park, she discovered many people were comfortable having their dogs off the lead, despite it not being a leash free area. But Niki was not.

When her daughter was about 7, she suffered a serious dog bite that required emergency surgery.  “And it was so intense that by the time I carried her from the car to emergency, they didn’t know if I needed help or she did because of the amount of blood loss. ‘Cause anything in the face is big, you know, and we didn’t realize at this stage that it had ripped her ear in half as well.”

Getting a new puppy, with her razor sharp teeth, triggered some fear. But it was going to the park with strange dogs running towards her that triggered post-traumatic stress.

But what made Niki really uncomfortable was having to ask strangers to change their behaviour to accommodate her needs.

“It is a really challenging thing to do because it’s going against what you normally believe about how you should behave or how you should act or things you should say. Because it’s about thinking about yourself. I needed to do this for me.”

Niki had to find the right way to tell her story as some people responded aggressively to her request.

“People just take it for granted that it’s OK to have their dogs off leads and one of the reasons that it is not is because accidents happen, and dogs do bite. And just because you’re comfortable and you know your dog, that’s great, and that’s fine in a leash free zone. But when it’s a park area with kids playing, and you let your dog run through, that’s really unfair to other people.”

Niki went on to talk about her reflections about her comfort zone as a result of having to ask others to please leash their dogs. “And I think the comfort zone thing is about understanding. The radius of comfort around you when you’re comfortable is quite big, but when there’s trauma or pain it is very tight. It took almost everything I had within me to articulate: I can’t cope, this is hurting. This is feeling really traumatic and then it made me think how many other times have I adjusted my radius or my comfort zone just to accommodate other people?”

The reason Niki was able to push through this time was because her daughter was also distressed by the situation, “because this meant so much to my daughter, I thought what a perfect thing to kick start for me that I need to start realizing I shouldn’t be adjusting my radius. I just need to find the right language to say this is at the end of my radius of comfort.”

I am personally really pleased to say that 9 out of 10 people responded well to Niki’s request to leash their dogs. Though I do wish it was 10!

One lesson Niki took from this experience is that it is ok to put yourself first! This was a huge lesson for her and has carried into all aspects of her life. “I was able to bring it into a work context. Someone made me feel uncomfortable in a work meeting and I was able to call it out. ‘I don’t know if you realize your passion is spilling across as aggression, so can you just clarify for me because it hit my radius [of comfort]?’”. The response she received was thanks – the person involved had not intended their passion to come across that way.

Niki has a special message to finish with today – she asked me to let all the other people who have shared their stories via this blog know that they touch people’s lives. It was reading all the stories that empowered Niki to speak up. And motivated her to share this story with you.

Thank you Niki!