Our first night together

She was with us from the first night, but never in a way that let either of us rest.

When Makenzie arrived, she came without much structure. No crate, no leash, no careful handover. During the journey, the driver had taken her out of the crate because she seemed calmer that way. Makenzie was passed from arm to arm in the lobby of our building, wiggly but not uncomfortable. We took her up to our apartment and placed her down in the hallway, giving her space to explore this new place.

She ran in with an ease I hadn’t expected. Investigating everything at once, she took up space without hesitation. I remember watching her and thinking that maybe this would be simpler than I had imagined. Maybe she would settle quickly, and maybe I could, too.

We had set up a playpen in advance: a bed, toys, food arranged carefully, as if order alone might soften the landing. She found it on her own, stepped inside, came back out to explore the apartment, and then went back in and fell asleep. Deeply. For hours.

The relief I felt then was almost physical. This looked like it was working. It felt like confirmation that preparation mattered, that thinking things through could carry me through this. We didn’t know what else to do, so we went to bed as well. We left the door open so she could hear us in the next room. Everyone slept — until she didn’t.

The howl that woke us wasn’t loud so much as lost, and it took me a minute to understand who was making this unfamiliar sound. A sound that felt less like fear and more like asking where everyone had gone. She had woken up alone, in a place she hadn’t chosen, without the context she had briefly borrowed from movement and novelty. The playpen hadn’t become a safe space. It was just where sleep had happened to find her. At the time, I brushed it off as something normal, something puppies do.

The following evening, we moved the playpen into the bedroom. Even though I had been taught that dogs don’t need to sleep in the bedroom with their humans, that puppies crying themselves to sleep was something they had to learn, I felt sorry for her. But at the same time, it didn’t strike me as cruel back then. It sounded responsible, and honestly, also grown-up.

From the playpen right next to our low futon bed she could see us, and we could reach down and touch her. The pen was large, placed right next to the bed, tied to the bedroom door so she would go straight into it and nowhere else — especially not on the bed. That line felt important to me then, though I couldn’t have explained why. From that second night on, the evenings began to split into two distinct moments.

The first came earlier, before bedtime, when her energy tipped over into something sharper. This was when I would end up on the kitchen counter, watching her from above, trying to stay out of reach. She went after me far more than Tobias. At the time, it felt personal. As if I had become the problem. She bit, lunged, clung on, relentless. I didn’t yet have language for overstimulation or overwhelm. I only knew that she felt powerful, and that I felt genuinely afraid in my own living room. Her little front paws could almost reach the counter top I was sitting on, and I found myself hoping she would never grow big enough to be able to jump.

Later came the second moment: bedtime. When she realised we would get ready for bed, she would run into the playpen and her focus narrowed completely. She snapped at the fabric, threw herself against the edges, tried to tear it apart. The intensity was brief but total, as if everything else dropped away. She would eventually collapse into sleep after a few minutes, but it was never a calm moment.

Some nights, she didn’t stay in the playpen at all. She wandered the living room instead, moving through the space alone, as if still searching for something she couldn’t find. I watched her and felt helpless, unsure whether stepping in would make things worse, or whether doing nothing already had. Were all dogs and puppies that strange at night?

It didn’t occur to me that the playpen itself might be the problem. I kept looking elsewhere — at her energy, at my inexperience, at the breed — anywhere but there. Part of me seemed to believe she understood my reasoning, even though I didn’t fully understand it myself. As if she could meet me halfway if only she wanted to.

Her breathing when she was upset stayed with me long after those nights ended. I noticed it every night and it stirred something older than this situation, making everything feel heavier. I cried myself to sleep more than once, shocked by how overwhelmed I felt, unsure how to live with this tiny being who seemed to need more than I knew how to give.

At one point, very early on, I seriously considered whether she might be better off with someone else. It was still early enough, I told myself, that she wouldn’t suffer too much from being rehomed. I was afraid I was raising an aggressive Shiba — afraid her world, and ours, would slowly close in. I read too many stories, and I completely missed how much I mattered in those moments.

Even then, she was a force. Physically and mentally strong. She remembered everything, and she persisted. Once she set her mind on something, the rest of the world seemed to fall away. That kind of determination can feel terrifying when you don’t yet know how to meet it. She still is that way. Over time, we have learned how to meet each other.

After about two weeks, I gave up, realising how exhausted we both were. I agreed to remove the playpen, taking away my own security blanket in the process, desperately wanting to prevent her becoming an aggressive Shiba past the point of any return.

That night, something loosened. Freed from the separation, she crawled into bed with us, lay down between us, and exhaled in a way I hadn’t heard before. With Tobias, she had always been able to rest during little daytime naps. With me, closeness took time. At first, we seemed to walk on eggshells around each other, but over time we found our comfort, and the first time her little body relaxed into mine felt quietly extraordinary. It was a beginning I hadn’t realised I was waiting for.

My anxiety didn’t disappear and my fear of doing things wrong stayed. But I was no longer afraid of her. Her affection made room for me to breathe again.

We still had many ups and downs ahead. But the feeling of her nose in the middle of the night, finding my neck, sliding along my back to slip under the blanket and settle, remains one of the most grounding memories I have of her puppyhood.

I couldn’t have named it then, but something in me was already changing. These days, she doesn’t need permission to come under the blanket. Neither of us sleeps well without the other present.

It’s strange how quietly these beginnings take shape.