taming the beast

Recently I was telling a new friend about how the right sliding door of my van is semi-broken, and it sometimes shuts when it feels like it.  Otherwise, it makes lots of noise when it is opening and closing, and often just doesn't want to close.  My alarm system recently stopped working, and the alarm will go off pretty much anytime I lock my doors. The alarm has gone off in the middle of town several times, in a restaurant parking lot, and in a hotel parking garage where I got called in my room at 3 am telling me to turn it off. Not nice.
I took it to Honda, and of course, they called me and asked me why I dropped my car off, what was it that needed to be fixed? I told them to lock the doors and wait.  The van sat in their parking lot for a couple of hours uneventfully.   So I was telling my friend this and she asked me what is going on on my right side, relating the car door to my person.  I don't know about my right side...hmmm...my right side is connected to my left brain...my chiropractor (her husband) has been picking up on my over-thinking-ness, stuck-in-my-brain-and-not-my-body-ness...maybe this is it?  Likewise, I asked myself about the tripping alarm connection...this winter, in the depths of despair--hell--I was in, I began locking my door every time I would drive anywhere, which is so out of character for me.  When I lived in New Paltz, I would almost never lock my doors, ever.  I really lived in trust of my community; I felt held there, and did not need a defense.  Here, my defensive impulse was triggered and it wasn't like I was just locking my door when I parked somewhere; I was locking my door just driving down the street.  I felt super-vulnerable, exposed, and like attack was imminent at any moment.  So I see the alarm malfunction as an imposed opening being laid onto me.  I didn't choose it, but its working.  I don't feel the need to lock while driving now anyway, but I don't have a choice whether I lock or not while parked at school or wherever.  I'm unlocked.  Its therapeutic.

Ok, so I am working the same type of 'outer as expression of inner' understanding to my dog.  An amazing thing has happened! We have had this relationship where I (and everyone else in my family) have no control of her and she and I and everyone else completely knows it.  When she's inside, she obeys SIT and LAY DOWN, but she is always waiting at the door ready to bolt, and once she's outside, out of arm's reach, she makes the rules....until now.  So last week my youngest opened the door and let her out (again) and I freaked out because of my asshole neighbor(s).  After a while of pointlessly being outside throwing food, trying to lure her in when I knew it wouldn't work, I got to the point where we were on the front lawn, close to the steps and front door.  I was throwing turkey towards the steps, and she was going along with me, but only so far as getting about 3 feet away.  She is WAY quicker than me and I know it and she knows it--there was no way I would be able to grab her.  I was feeling the desperation of the situation; I'm on my lawn and my dog is three excruciating feet away and I can't get her and the neighbors are going to be back from work soon and....I got an intuitive thought--forget you're outside--tell her to sit.  So I did.  And it fucking worked! She sat down.  I told her to lay down.  AND SHE DID.  And I reached over calmly and grabbed her collar.  Totally amazing. This blew me away.  The next day she dug a hole under the fence we just put up in our backyard, and she was out again.  My husband was home and he went outside with the turkey.  This time she wouldn't get closer than about six feet.  I came outside and told him my new trick, we tried it and not only did she sit and lay down, she rolled over and he calmly walked over and got her.  This is completely amazing to me, the fact that I found this short-circuit that will override her wild-ness, and that it worked more than once, and therefore I have a new-found sense of control over my dog, and I know it, and SHE knows it.
I am trying to figure out what this means about me besides the obvious.  My inner wildness can be tamed?  Or maybe more generally, yesterday's impossible is possible today...?