Until I started fostering my dog Sylvester in September 2024, my own life felt like my primary responsibility. When I started caring for Sylvester, who I have now adopted, my life became about more than myself. The lessons I’ve learned from pet parenting couldn’t be more valuable or transformative for a college student.

Although I can’t universally recommend adopting a dog in college, I haven’t regretted Sylvester for a second. As college students, we’re taught to push our nose to the grindstone and prioritize our success over caring for ourselves and others, but having a dog makes that physically impossible. When you’re the primary caregiver for a dog, you become more aware of the balance between self-advocacy and compassion, and the importance of noticing and communicating your own needs.

I decided to start fostering dogs because I’ve always felt most at peace and safe around animals. Despite the friendly neighborhood dogs and their owners around during sunny days on Macalester’s campus, I missed waking up to a paw on my face. When I signed up to foster dogs with Pet Haven, a foster-based rescue in St. Paul, I thought I would foster all sorts of dogs, from snow-snouted couch potatoes to 10-pound balls of energy.

However, Sylvester ended up choosing me. After taking him to adoption events, walking around with a neon yellow “adopt me leash” and seeing his profile up on Pet Haven’s adoption page for two months, I considered that perhaps we were just meant to be a pair. It still wasn’t an easy decision to adopt him.

While fostering Sylvester, I often felt like I didn’t have the capabilities to maintain my academic work, be a responsible news editor at The Mac Weekly and even just keep my space clean on top of taking care of a dog. Taking care of a college dog is committing to consistently proving yourself wrong.

When most dogs come out of a shelter, they require a decompression period. This typically comes in segments of three days, three weeks and three months. For the first three days I had Sylvester, he didn’t look or act like he does now. Many dogs refuse to eat and spend their first day constantly pacing, and some may not even want to leave the crates they arrived home in.

Three weeks in, and Sylvester didn’t even look the same. The dog who hadn’t wanted attention from anyone other than me, and pawed at me constantly, was suddenly weaving through my best friend’s legs in demand of a massage. After three months, the dog who turned his nose up at toys was suddenly performing play bows on my bed and zooming across the apartment.

I wish I could say this transformation was easy, but earning trust, especially with someone who has been hurt before often feels more painstaking than magical. The process of helping a dog adjust to a new space is a lesson in earning trust — we end up breaking trust because of mistakes, even as small as accidentally stepping on paws. Sometimes we have to rupture trust with someone we love because of unavoidable circumstances like vet appointments. I find it’s a lot easier to tell people unpleasant things they really need to hear after about three iterations of attempting to lure my dog into the vet’s office. While dogs are much less complex than our human friends, they certainly look at you with the same amount of resentment.

Some aspects of navigating a college dog were about helping my dog adjust to a new life, and others relied more on tailoring my life to my dog’s routine. Unfortunately, I ended up adopting a dog who does not act as an alarm clock, an impossible struggle for the world’s heaviest sleeper. I thought a dog would drag me out of bed early in the morning, but Sylvester and I are apparently both able to sleep through two hours of subsequent alarms. Once, I even ran into my professor who was walking to the class I was about to skip in 10 minutes because I was walking Sylvester. After amassing an utterly embarrassing number of absences, I did manage to adjust to waking up two hours before my first scheduled commitment. But these days, there’s nothing I look forward to more than my early morning walks with Sylvester.

If it hadn’t been for the grace and care of some amazing professors, work supervisors and friends, I wouldn’t have been able to figure out the balance I have now. The thing that made the biggest difference was learning that I could give back. I used to panic over asking people for extra favors, but taking care of a real animal who means more than the world to me has taught me that friendships and care are not transactional. It’s a lot more about paying it forward than paying it back.

The process of repeating this week after week and getting adjusted to living with a dog has absolutely changed what feels easy and doable in terms of giving to others. As someone who consistently has to stay up an extra hour to catch up on emails and assignments I could’ve done during the time I was walking and playing with my dog, I’m happy to pick up the slack in the unexpected moments when someone else can’t fulfill their commitments.

The days of turning up late and worrying that perhaps I smelled like dog diarrhea have taught me that sometimes, getting into the “why” is far less helpful than just saying: “You don’t owe me an explanation” and giving someone five minutes to get their life together, whatever that looks like for them.

At the same time, I have to set more boundaries with myself and find a way to inventively make up for the ways I can’t come through for others. It’s a lot of work, both on myself and in every other area of life, but it’s not something I’m going through alone anymore. No matter how bad my day is, how much I worry that I’ve failed myself or others, I have a best friend who has never known anything better than me and that’s an honor and commitment that colors every interaction I have in my day.

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