Getting a golden retriever cured me of my lifelong phobia of dogs

Without warning, the dogs appeared on the deserted Thai beach, hackles raised, heads down. A pack of strays, they started to snarl and stalk towards us – a group of teenage girls, returning from a party at dawn.

What happened next proved that my lifelong fear of dogs was not irrational (imagine someone with a flying phobia in a pitching plane). 

The dogs ignored everyone else but me and began to circle around. ‘Don’t run,’ hissed my friend. I tried not to. But my survival instinct took over and  I ran for my life, frenzying the pack and forcing my friends to run too. We were saved from a mauling only by bursting into a fortuitously unlocked beach hut close by. The dogs prowled under the hut’s stilts for two hours before we could leave. 

You can’t hide fear from dogs – it excites them – so a dog phobia endlessly justifies itself. But something has to start the cycle. When did my anxiety start? Possibly when my mother left me playing on the lawn at  a garden party as a toddler and later discovered me frozen with terror beneath a massive, playful English sheepdog.  I don’t remember it.

I also wonder if my fear of dogs was  a conduit for other primal childhood fears, the things I couldn’t understand or control – the monsters under the bed. Needless to say, I didn’t grow  up in a doggy household. 

In my 20s, I knew my reaction was disproportionate, but the sound of fierce barking would make my heart slam and bring on a cloying, accelerating panic. I’d cross the street if I saw a pit-bull-type breed – I’d read the horror stories. I could never relax on a ‘dog-friendly’ beach – that was my idea of hell. I could see the predatory wolf in a poodle. Unfortunately, dogs were everywhere. My phobia was exhausting and restrictive. 

I hated being someone who was scared of dogs – I was fearless in so many other ways, it didn’t fit. But the oddest thing was that I didn’t hate them. I liked their animal otherness. I just didn’t want them anywhere near me.  

In my 30s, my anxiety passed on to my three children. Overwhelmed by their vulnerability, I’d whisk them home if ever I saw a dog off its lead in our London park – its jaws always terrifyingly at buggy level.

At the same time,  I desperately didn’t want them to inherit my phobia, so I’d hold their hands and say through gritted teeth, ‘Oh, look, what  a nice doggy!’ (A psychologist friend points out that my true feelings would have been conducted, like a bolt of electricity, through the grip  and heat of my hand. And that babies, like dogs, always sense your fear.) 

Four years ago, we moved out of London. By that time I was dog-wary but not phobic: motherhood had made me less self-absorbed. But my young daughter was nervous. I couldn’t bear the idea of her carrying that burden. I knew  it was time. Harry the golden retriever arrived last autumn  in a whirl of blond fur, like a demented Furby. It was a shock at first: Christ, there’s a canine in my kitchen! Now it’s hard to imagine life without him.

At nine months, he’s a large, powerful dog with an impressive set of teeth – I know since, astonishingly, I brush them. I trust him; he trusts  me. But I’m respectful. He is still an animal, wild at heart. Like most dogs, he could do serious damage if he wanted  to but (and this was a complete revelation) he doesn’t.  A tummy rub will suffice.

‘The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde’ by Eve Chase (Michael Joseph, £14.99) is out now