Dogs Gonna Bark: The Real Cost of Managing Everyone Else's Reaction

Episode 70 of The Bold Life | Career Reinvention & Strategy for Ambitious Women

This morning I tried to walk my dogs. All four of them. At the same time.

If you've ever tried to walk four dogs at once, you already know how this ends. If you haven't, stay with me. This story sounds like it's about dogs. It isn't.

It's about how many of us arrange our whole lives around keeping other people from making noise, and what that costs us.

I Stopped Walking My Dogs So I Wouldn't Have to Hear Them Complain

I have four dogs, and I don't walk them nearly as often as I should.

Part of that is time. I've been working. A lot. Working, and working, and working some more.

But part of it is something I didn't want to look at too closely. When I take one or two of them out, the ones left behind lose their minds. They bark. They howl. Every one of them is going to get a turn, and they don't care. They aren't getting a turn right now, and they want the whole neighborhood to know it.

And I didn't want to annoy the neighbors.

So instead of dealing with the howling, I just didn't walk them. Most days. For a long time.

Think about that. I gave up something I needed (fresh air, movement, sun, twenty minutes outside my own head) so that nobody within earshot would be bothered.

Walking All Four at Once Was a Plan Built for the Neighbors, Not for Me

This morning I decided to fix it. My fix was to take all four at once. No one gets left behind. No one howls. No one complains.

Look at what that plan was built around. It wasn't built around what I could actually handle. It was built around making sure nobody, not the dogs and not the neighbors, had a reason to be unhappy.

We made it across the street into the park. That's as far as the plan held.

A man was walking his dog. One dog. Off leash. And when we got close, that dog sat down beside him. Calm. Polite. Perfectly trained.

Mine did not sit.

Mine barked like they had never seen another living creature. They went in every direction at once. Leashes crossing. Leashes tangling. And somewhere in there, I dropped one.

Buddy, my golden retriever, took that as an invitation. He went straight over to the man and his very well-behaved dog while I yelled his name and stumbled around with the rest of the leashes.

Buddy came back. Good. And the second he did, Geri slipped right out of his harness and ran down the street after them.

So now I'm standing in the park holding three dogs and one empty harness.

One Dropped Leash Became My Proof That I Can't Hold Anything Together

That was it. I was done.

I walked three dogs and an empty harness straight back to the house. And I'll be honest about what I was thinking, because it wasn't pretty. Geri could stay lost, for all I was concerned.

I got the three of them inside. Then I went back out for Geri.

I found him across the park. We locked eyes. I stood there with my hands on my hips, and I didn't say a word. I didn't have to.

He knew. He was in trouble like the rest of them.

But the thought that did the damage wasn't about Geri. It was this:

These dogs are just another mirror on my inability to keep my shit together.

That's the thought. Word for word.

Look at how fast that happened. A dropped leash, which is a completely predictable thing when you're holding four of them, turned into a verdict on me as a person. Not "that was too many dogs." Not "that plan didn't work." But "I can't keep it together."

And underneath that was something bigger. I was tired. Tired of being sick and tired about things and people I can't control.

Let's run it through the Model, because this is exactly how it works.

The circumstance: I held four leashes. I dropped one. One dog slipped his harness. Those are the facts.

The thought: I can't keep my shit together.

The feeling: Fed up. Defeated. Done.

And the actions that came from that feeling are where it gets uncomfortable.

I Punished the Dogs for a Plan I Designed

I put all of them in their crates. I cleaned the house. Hard. The one who kept complaining, I shushed. Because I had to make sure they knew I wasn't happy.

I needed them to know.

The dogs. I needed the dogs to understand my disappointment.

They did nothing wrong. They did what four excited dogs do when they finally get outside and see another dog. I was the one who decided to take all four at once. I was the one who built a plan around other people's comfort instead of my own capacity. And when it fell apart, I turned it on them. And on myself.

The result: No walk. More time indoors. More evidence that I can't keep it together.

That's the loop. The thought produces the result that proves the thought.

The Barking Was Going to Happen No Matter What I Did

About an hour later, I tried again. Differently. One dog at a time.

And yes, the second I walked out the door with the first one, the other three started howling. Exactly as loud as I knew they would. I almost turned around. I almost aborted the whole thing on the front step.

And then I thought: Forget the neighbors. Dogs gonna bark. I need to get a goddamn walk in for one day of my life.

That was the shift. Not a better technique. A decision.

The barking was never avoidable. That's what I finally understood. If I walked them together, there would be chaos. If I walked them separately, there would be howling. If I didn't walk them at all, I'd be the one paying for it, stuck inside, working, not remembering what it feels like to be warm in the sun.

There was no option where nobody made noise. There was only the choice of which cost I was willing to carry.

And for a long time, I'd been choosing the cost that landed on me. Every time. Because it was the quiet one. Because nobody else had to hear about it.

I'd been putting my own needs last in my own life so that nobody else would be inconvenienced.

Ambitious Women Run the Four-Dogs-at-Once Plan at Work Every Day

So why am I telling you a story about my dogs on a career podcast?

Because I've watched so many ambitious women run this exact plan at work. And I've run it myself more times than I want to admit.

You take on everything at once so nobody feels left out. Every project. Every request. Every stakeholder who wants a piece of you. You don't say "not yet" to anyone, because "not yet" makes people unhappy, and unhappy people make noise.

So you carry all of it.

Then something slips. A deadline. A detail. A conversation you didn't have time to prepare for. Something completely predictable for anyone carrying that much.

And instead of thinking "I'm carrying too much," you think "I can't keep it together."

That's Boundary Overload. It's one of the five career signals: over-functioning, over-giving, absorbing responsibility until you're everyone's solution. What makes it so hard to recognize is that it looks like competence right up until something drops. From the outside, you're the one who handles everything. From the inside, you're bracing for the next thing to slip.

And there's always a man with one dog. The colleague who seems so calm. Whose work looks easy. Whose one well-trained dog sits nicely at his side. You compare yourself to him while you're tangled in leashes, and you conclude you're the problem.

He has one dog. You have four.

You aren't failing a character test. You're carrying more than one person can carry at the same time.

Knowing Your Limit Is a Decision You Make on Purpose

This is Stage Two of The Bold Life Career Reinvention Framework: Make the Decision.

A lot of women treat knowing their limit like admitting defeat. It isn't. Your limit is information. Once you have it, you have to decide what to do with it.

And every decision comes with noise.

If you stop taking on everything at once, someone will be unhappy. Your boss might push back. A colleague might complain that you're less available. Someone who is used to you being the solution will have to find a different one.

That's the barking. It's going to happen.

The decision isn't how to prevent it. The decision is whether you'll let it happen so you can get what you need.

Stage Two is about choosing your next move without waiting for perfect conditions. And so many women are waiting for one specific condition: the one where nobody objects.

That condition doesn't exist.

Every one of my dogs got a walk this morning. One at a time. That was always possible. Everyone was always going to get a turn. The only thing that had to change was my willingness to let three of them be loud about it for a while.

What Noise Have You Been Avoiding?

And what has avoiding it cost you?

If you can't tell whether what you're feeling is burnout, boundary overload, or something else entirely, start there. Take the free 2-minute Career Burnout Signals Quiz at theboldlife.coach/career-burnout-quiz. Name the signal before you pick the fix.

Dogs gonna bark.

Take the walk anyway.

Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, or at theboldlife.coach/podcast.