Paranoia with a real starting point

This afternoon I was walking my mom's dogs because she is sick and I need exercise.

We have a golden retriever who we got when one day he just appeared in our yard. We called the shelter and did everything legal to find the owner. When we did she gave him to me.

We don't know his history. The person who gave him to me said he'd been with a few families, always on a chain. We suspect he once had a family with kids and training as he vaguely seems to remember some training.

So I'm walking along and a car came so I took him to the side of the road. The car came up a hill, saw us and accelerated but as the young man driving went past he yelled at me "you something that dog!". No time to react. I kept going but decided I didn't want another encounter and so we went back early.

All that's fine. Creepy but fine. I think he might have said I stole that dog and that's not true. But with the dog's history I can see where one might think that; for all I know he was stolen at some point but not by us. I don't know his history before last October but I do know that we got him legally b/c the shelter was involved. It could have been anything. "clean up after" that dog? (We always do). "control that dog" (makes no sense but we do have 2 dogs that bark although this guy is not a neighbor so shouldn't complain).

But now I'm paranoid about walking the dogs again. He can yell from his moving car all he wants (and next time I'll be ready to get his license plate; today I was too shocked) but if he decides to get more aggressive it could be scary. And of course my brain has gone there and now something I truly enjoy is scary.

Like I'm not paranoid enough without people helping...

Sounds like a total jerkoff, regardless of what he said, he should have came and talked to you like an adult, not shouted from his car like some kind of hoodlum.

Sorry he scared you!

Hello BeyondtheRainbow: I have a dog I walk every day. It doesn't happen often, but every once in a while someone yells something out of a car window. You're correct. It can be unsettling. It's just one of those sorry experiences we dog-walkers have to put up with... sorry it had to happen to you...

I'm so sorry that happened to you lady. Certainly it wasn't aimed at you personally; perhaps he was having a poor day? I don't know. Either way, I would try to keep walking your dog. There is no way this guy will know what time you walk your dog and therefore there is little evidence that he will even show up again. How terrible that he scared you!

To answer your question, yes I have had paranoia that has sprung from something real. When I believed I was either being possessed or being surrounded by evil spirits, for instance, I had just before read Biblical passages about people being possessed. I believe I unintentionally absorbed the information and eventually began to disassociate in public places. At that point I would retreat to some place by myself (public bathroom even) and start casting out these demons (also absorbed from Scripture) until I felt peace again. Then usually, when I rejoined my group of people, I would feel this panic that I interpreted as demon possession very soon after and would repeat the process.

This is so human and kind of you to adopt this beautiful lost creature. I, too, have a golden retriever companion, a golden friend I call her

Even if the dog was stolen by someone and then ditched by him, you're still his angel!

You deserve to enjoy your walks so don't let random strangers get to you

Thanks. He really adopted us. We have always had goldens, since I was a little girl. We were breeders for a good part of my childhood. Our sweet golden died in 2012 and my mom decided that since she's getting older she wanted a smaller dog. The dog she got is a great dog but he's no golden. We had a golden lab/golden retriever mix and she died in spring 2014. That just made us miss goldens more. So when he appeared in our driveway it was very obvious that we needed a golden. (I live across the driveway from my mom so the dogs are hers but mine too in a sense). I fell in love with him immediately and was so glad the owner gave him to me. We've improved his quality of life so much and just the last 2 months he's starting to gain confidence and seems more sure that nothing bad is going to happen. A year ago if it were raining or snowing and we let him out he'd go to the back of the fenced yard and wouldn't understand he could come back when he'd peed. Now he runs back in with the other dog.

The scary kid hasn't been past again. My mom saw the car and the kid was in it but with a woman driving and nothing happened (she was walking the other dog). So we're hoping it was a fluke. Just this week the dogs learned to walk together without dominance issues so we aren't walking alone as much and that's a good thing on our rural road.

goldens are the best.

Oh god.. so touching. Only to imagine the poor golden outside thinking he's not allowed back inside

My golden was a savior for me out of my most hellish depression. Today I'm her savior cuz nobody would take a fearful dog like her... sshe's so much better than when we took her.. but she's genetically predisposed :-) so she be anxious for life but I can help lower it :-)

Some random event like that would have totally set off my paranoia. I would have probably run home and started going through my usual "I need to do this to feel safe" ritual. When I get like this I really try hard to think of alternative explanations.

I've mostly just stayed fixated on my mom seeing him and verifying that he was a teenager. I find them less scary than adults. We've also been walking the dogs together as much as possible and I am ready at all times to get a license plate number and call the police if I am harassed at all. Hopefully that will be a needless precaution.

Somehow I'm feeling less paranoid this week which is funny with my shift from depression to mixed. My pdoc told me that she doesn't think I'm going to have a lot of ongoing psychosis once my meds are changed and I get out of this episode and that helps. I haven't had to deal with much paranoia since I've been on meds, so 13 years. She didn't even know me when paranoia was a big problem and doesn't know it was once upon a time probably. I hate it so much. I hope she's right and it goes away when my brain chemisty straightens out.

I know, it was really sad. It has taken him 14 months to learn that he is allowed to take his bone back if the other dog takes it, to learn to play and wrestle (my mom is thrilled about that ), to not shake with anxiety when something is not in his routine. But he's changed so much in that time. The animal shelter warned me that he would be likely to always be a runaway. For the first year we had extra blocks on the gates to the dog yard to keep him from tunneling out. We micro-chipped and put on a collar with his contact info and name. We worked and worked with him on coming when he was called. And finally a few weeks ago he slipped his collar when I was walking him and went to a neighbors but after a few minutes came and let me put the collar back on. Since then he's had a couple of chances to get away and he doesn't even try. It's so good to see him secure and confident. He deserves it for the years on chains (and b/c they didn't neuter him, none of the prior owners, which increased his desire to wander.)

He's a sweet, sweet boy and I'm glad he appeared here.

This post was kind of about the dog, but I really appreciated those who talked about how this type of thing opens up our paranoia and delusional thinking. Thanks for sharing. And that guy could have been yelling anything - kudos to you for walking your dog at all. I have a real problem being outside with people driving by me. I practice how to walk, and wave and when to look up as if noticing them suddenly like normal people might do.

True but he was definitely angry. I wish it were a positive thing but he was not happy with whatever he said and his aggressive driving just accentuated it.

But yes, it really does make it so hard to not be paranoid. I don't know if I'm practicing but I try to be aware of not showing paranoia when I'm out in public to try to look more natural. Who knows if I succeed. Probably sometimes and sometimes not.