This past Tuesday we sat down with Tamara McNealy and her Border Collie and Pointer rescue, Darby, at their apartment in Washington, D.C. Tamara opened up about why having Darby is so important to her mental health, for the second installment in our special series profiling members of our TOC community.

When Tamara McNealy, a microbiologist focused on infectious diseases, first saw a picture of her Border Collie and Pointer rescue, Darby, she knew that she was her dog. Darby was only ten weeks old and living at a shelter outside of Atlanta when Tamara brought her home.

A couple of years earlier, Tamara’s beloved Border Collie rescue, Jessie, died unexpectedly. Jessie was 14 years old when she came down with either meningitis or complications related to a medical condition that she had earlier in the year, which resulted in the removal of her spleen. “I was devastated when I lost her. She was just my world,” Tamara remembered.

Tamara’s veterinarian at the time told her, “When you're ready for another dog, Jessie is going to send you the right one.” Even though Tamara admits that as a scientist, she “likes facts,” she said that she still gets goosebumps thinking about that conversation. When she saw Darby, “it was kind of this gift that I was receiving from Jessie.”

How Having Opposite Personalities Helps Tamara and Darby

In a lot of ways, Tamara and Darby are opposites. Tamara is a self-described introvert who works from home most of the time. Darby is a social butterfly and wakes Tamara up every morning with a little dog kiss. Tamara loves the water, but when they go hiking, Darby searches for rocks to cross over streams, just so she doesn’t get her paws wet.

Today, Tamara can’t imagine life without her. “I've dealt with a lot of issues over the years and had a very dysfunctional childhood … [With a] dog, ... you come home [and] they're happy to see you. They give you a purpose, [and] they give you something to do ... Darby in particular because she's social, you know we go to the dog park and I've told numerous people there, if I didn't have a dog and ... a great dog park, I would know nobody in D.C. But through the dog park, I have this whole community that has expanded into a hiking group, and it's expanded into a book club, and it's all because of Darby. It's because I have a dog,” Tamara said.

How Training Helps Darby and Tamara

When it comes to training, Darby is extremely food motivated (it helps that Tamara makes her homemade pumpkin and peanut butter treats) and she loves to learn. “I think that most people forget that their dogs have this very stimulating brain that needs to do something. So I think the more you work with them, the more they're connected with you, the better behaved they are, and then the better your whole community is …” Tamara said.

Training Darby has also been transformative in helping Tamara cope with her own anxiety. Recently she and Darby completed the first 14-day Tails of Connection Challenge.

“The Tails of Connection [Challenge] ... gives you something very discrete to do. If you're having one of those moments where your head is spinning and you can’t focus, you can just go [work] with your dog and have something that you're going to focus on. It focuses your brain and then it stops some of that other spinning that’s going around, and so I think it definitely benefits not only the dog, but also the person as well,” Tamara told TOC.

Even though Tamara thinks that Jessie was a more driven dog, she told us that Darby is more affectionate. “I often tell people that my last dog was the dog that my soul needed at the time, but Darby is like the dog that my heart needed when I got her ... In the morning, she is always waiting right there beside me until the alarm goes off. She's just the sweetest dog. I've never had a dog quite so sweet.”

You can follow Tamara’s life with Darby through their instagram account. If you're interested in future Tails of Connection Challenges, let us know here.