Willingness With a Tail Wag

On Courage, Engagement, and Chasing What Moves Us

Every time I walk Blaze, he assumes we are entering a war zone.

The enemy shifts daily.

Sometimes it’s a squirrel.
Sometimes it’s a bird.
Sometimes it’s another dog minding its own business.
Sometimes it’s a car with its headlights on in broad daylight (deeply suspicious).
Sometimes it’s a leaf that has made the questionable decision to move.

Blaze is not a brave dog.

He startles at the sound of his own tags. If the Amazon driver sets a package down too firmly, he retreats three steps and reassesses. If a squirrel ever actually stopped, turned around, and made direct eye contact, I am confident Blaze would immediately reconsider his life choices.

And yet.

He lunges.

He pulls.

He announces himself to the entire neighborhood as though he has been personally assigned to protect us from airborne foliage.

There is no hesitation. No internal monologue. No strategic plan. Just full-bodied engagement with whatever has dared to exist within his line of sight.

I, on the other hand, do not lunge at anything.

I deliberate.

I calculate.

I imagine seventeen possible outcomes and preemptively apologize for half of them.

Blaze sees a squirrel and thinks: We must engage.

I see an opportunity, a conversation, a risk, and think: Let’s think about this for a week.

He is not brave in the traditional sense. He is not charging into danger because he believes in his superior strength. He would lose every physical confrontation he attempts. But he is willing.

Willing to try.

Willing to be wrong.

Willing to look ridiculous if necessary.

And that willingness might be its own kind of courage.

On our walks, Blaze pulls forward with such urgency that I sometimes wonder what it must feel like to move through the world assuming everything is worth investigating. Every rustle. Every movement. Every possibility.

He does not ask:

· What if the squirrel misunderstands me?

· What if this bark is poorly received?

· What if I fail to catch it and embarrass myself in front of the other dogs?

He does not consider whether the leaf prefers silence.

He simply engages.

Meanwhile, I spend an astonishing amount of time editing myself before I ever open my mouth. I replay conversations before they happen. I soften statements. I weigh tone. I evaluate risk. I wonder how I’ll be perceived. I wonder if I’m too much. Or not enough. Or slightly misaligned in some socially detectable way I won’t discover until 2 a.m.

Blaze, blissfully unaware of optics, throws his whole body into the moment.

And I envy that.

Not the barking, exactly. The willingness.

There’s something unfiltered about the way he lives. It’s not aggression. It’s not dominance. It’s not even confidence. It’s presence. He is fully where he is.

If a squirrel exists, it is his job — apparently — to acknowledge it.

If another dog appears across the street, he must connect.

If the wind blows, he must participate.

I walk beside him holding the leash, trying to look composed while he conducts a full investigation of a plastic bag caught in a hedge.

But underneath the humor, I find myself wondering what I’ve been holding back from.

How many squirrels have I politely ignored?

How many conversations have I tiptoed around because I didn’t want to lunge?

How many dreams have I quietly evaluated to death instead of simply chasing for the joy of the chase?

Blaze does not need to catch the squirrel. He just needs to try.

That distinction matters.

Because maybe courage isn’t about victory. Maybe it’s about engagement.

Maybe it’s about being willing to show up — loudly, imperfectly, sometimes embarrassingly — in a world that may or may not respond the way you hope.

Blaze has no illusion that he will win these battles. If a squirrel descended from the tree and ran toward him, I would likely have to carry him home. But that possibility does not stop him from giving it everything he has.

And I wonder what might shift in me if I approached my life that way.

If I stopped assuming that every leap required guaranteed success.

If I allowed myself to bark when something mattered.

If I ran toward the thing instead of rehearsing reasons not to.

There is, of course, a balance. I am not suggesting we all begin lunging at strangers or confronting landscaping. Self-control has its place. Leashes are important.

But maybe there is something holy in Blaze’s refusal to disengage.

He is not guarded.

He is not curated.

He is not concerned with how he looks mid-lunge.

He simply lives in bold, impulsive response to the world in front of him.

And at the end of every walk — after defending us from seventeen leaves, three dogs, one suspicious sedan, and the general concept of movement — he collapses on the living room floor, completely spent.

No rumination.

No replay.

No second-guessing.

Just rest.

I cannot remember the last time I lived that way.

Fully engaged.

Fully expressive.

And then fully at peace.

Tomorrow morning, he will spot something in the distance and brace himself like a warrior preparing for battle. I will tighten my grip on the leash and prepare to negotiate with gravity.

And somewhere between his enthusiasm and my restraint, I will try — just a little — to lean forward instead of back.

Because sometimes courage looks less like confidence
and more like willingness with a tail wag.

What if courage isn’t about conquering the thing?
What if it’s about answering it?

The rustle.
The movement.
The moment that says, “Go.”

Blaze answers every time.

I’m learning — slowly — to answer more often.