My sensitive dog's first two weeks as a campground host
An introvert and her shy blue heeler decide to volunteer at a busy state park. The punchline? They love it.
Hello from a season of life I couldn’t imagine five years ago: Sean, Scout, and I are campground hosts in the south Florida Keys!
This means three main things: 1) We now live next to an impossibly turquoise ocean, 2) we’re about to spend our longest time in a single location since we first moved into this yellow van all the way back in early 2023, and 3) we interact with more people and pets in a typical morning than we used to average in a whole week.
Those of you who know Scout or have read a handful of my Paws and Reflect posts over the years understand that she is not a social butterfly. I thought she was ready for this new challenge—if I didn’t, we wouldn’t have willingly put ourselves in a position where strangers walking into your campsite is the norm—but my stomach still fizzed with trepidation-tinged excitement (or maybe excitement-tinged trepidation?) the whole drive down.
There’s a difference between being ready in the sense of “can handle this without causing a major scene; will survive” and being ready in the sense of “will actively enjoy herself with no regrets.”
As we settled into our new normal, how much help would Scout need from us? How able would we be to provide that help when stretched in more different directions, trying to maintain existing remote work obligations on top of volunteer duties? Startling situations have always been our nervous cattle dog’s kryptonite. Were we waltzing into an environment where each and every day would put her through an adrenaline rush?
Before we arrived, I wrote “recovery from stress” on my calendar as a top priority for the month. Now that we’re officially two weeks in, I’m thrilled to say the stress itself has basically been a non-issue.
How Scout used to be in campgrounds, in the olden (read: very reactive) days
Our cattle dog’s fear reactivity has always been worse when she’s stationary but triggers are moving. Sitting still in a campsite—trapped in one location—while other dogs passed in close proximity was one of the hardest situations we could put her in, up there with relaxing at a dog-friendly patio.
The first time we took Scout tent camping, long before our van-life days, we had to:
Keep close watch on her at all times (like, actually holding the leash)
Always have treats on hand to immediately reward (and admittedly distract) her
Be hyper aware of the environment in case someone was going to walk into our campsite to say hello, especially if they had their own dogs in tow
Her self-regulation around prey was also still in the works, so we stayed on the lookout for squirrels and lizards wandering too close. She could resist the urge to chase with reminders from us, but left to her own devices? Gal sure knew how to sprint after critters.
Scout’s campground baseline before we arrived for this volunteer position
Thanks to full-time living in the van, Scout’s camping finesse improved. I credit both natural exposure and continued management/training on our human end of things.
A little over a year ago (after staying in this very state park where we are now volunteer hosts!) I put together a post of ways our cattle dog was an excellent campground neighbor. “Instead of working on Scout’s skills each time we park somewhere new, mostly we get to sit back and enjoy those skills,” I began.
The list included things like her increasing environmental confidence (not taking so long to get comfy in a brand-new spot), how much she genuinely loves just resting outside, her overall neutrality to people and pets not in our own space, her ability to play just about anywhere (which drastically improves our fulfillment opportunities!), and her fairly quick bounce-back when something does catch her off guard.
Also this: “She likes to have her own lawn chair. This belongs on the list because it brings a lot of joy into the world: to herself, to me and Sean, and definitely to the friendly folks who walk by and tell us how cute she is.” 😉
But still. Just because I thought she was one of the world’s best campground dogs didn’t mean she’d be one of the world’s best campground hosts, you know? My biggest worry was this: With so many more people actually entering our space to ask questions and chat and get help, would she be able to stay so neutral? I think a big part of her confidence in van life has come from the fact that she knows Hermes is always a safe space. She’s able to ignore much of what goes on around her because she trusts it’s not going to affect her. Would that change when she realized that this time around the circle of comfort was smaller? We still wouldn’t let anyone actually enter our van, of course, but they’d much more often come up right next to it.
And then there was the whole “she is adorable and interested in affiliating with humans but also doesn’t want strangers to touch her” thing, which gets more complicated if she’s outside with us when somebody approaches. If the new person is open to it, all she wants to do is take a cautious-curious sniff from afar. But friendly strangers often interpret that mild interest as a bid for full-on head and belly rubs, which 1) she hates and 2) erodes her confidence that she can investigate people in the future without her boundaries being violated.
How would I manage my role of community-minded, open-and-welcoming campground host without feeling awkward about simultaneously advocating for my reserved dog?
What Scout’s days look like now
I don’t want to over-romanticize anything about our life living in a van, and particularly not this new chapter with all its nuances, so let me say right away: Scout has gotten startled a couple times. Once she was asleep in our site when a fellow volunteer came to say hello, and she woke with a bark. If we holler to someone she can’t see in the campsite next to us, she might low growl a little under her breath. Mostly she wants to know what’s going on. (This is natural, especially for a herding breed.)
But when she does know what’s going on? Holy hell, my friends. I can’t believe how excellent she’s been at processing—and dismissing—it.
A typical day looks something like this:
We wake up before sunrise and take Scout on a walk when the temperature is still cool enough for her to comfortably explore.
She eats breakfast while we work out, either in the van if we leave her behind for our own jog or outside with us as we stretch and strength train.
If we’re on camp host duty, she spends most of the morning napping in the air conditioning while we clean the bathrooms. If we’re off, she lounges outside as we start our computer-centric work.
When someone without a dog comes to talk to us, we try to greet them in front of the van, closer to the road than the back of our site. So far Scout generally stays where she is—either sunbathing outside or napping inside—and simply observes. (Most of the time she doesn’t even lift her chin off the ground.)
She’s gotten bolder with some of our fellow volunteers and now approaches them to sniff. They have unanimously been perfect when we ask them to not reach for her. She even took a treat from a very tall, very deep-voiced new friend!1
If someone with a dog comes over, we just preemptively tell her to “go away” (her crate cue) so we can focus on our guests as needed.
She sleeps deeply in and outside of the van. I like to think the ocean’s constant hum helps here.
In many ways Scout’s world has gotten smaller these last weeks—we’re staying in one place with less driving than usual, we talking the same walking route most mornings, she isn’t allowed on the beach, there’s less novelty in the passive sense we’ve all come to take for granted—but she doesn’t seem to mind one bit.
Allow me to celebrate that this whole thing is going even better than hoped, for all of us.
Other notes and news
Oh gosh, where to even start?! First, thank you so much for being here. I will never be over the fact that hundreds of kind creature-loving people care to read about my life with Scout (and musings on tangentially related things). Amidst recent chaos, I have one big thing to shout about:
THE DOG LOVER’S BUCKET LIST comes out in just over a month!!
Five weeks from now I will officially be able to call myself Published Author. I still can’t quite believe it?! This week we finalized plans to donate some copies of the education-inspiration-journal book to Scout’s humane society—where I adopted her in 2019 (although I maintain that it can’t possibly have been so long ago)—which brings me great joy.
I can’t wait to open my box of author copies and probably sob.
I don’t usually let strangers give Scout food right from their hands. It creates unnecessary conflict: The pull of her desire for the treat can encourage her to approach when she actually doesn’t want to, putting her in a situation she’s not ready for—especially if the potential new friend takes her excitement for the food as excitement to be pet. But in this situation, we knew our fellow volunteer well enough to trust that he’d follow directions, and he was so sweet and excited about giving her a lil’ something. Nuance, always, in how we approach different situations!