The Strange Feeling of Becoming the Person You Needed

There is a strange moment that sneaks up on you if you stay around long enough.

You don’t notice it happening. There isn’t a ceremony. Nobody hands you a certificate declaring that you’ve somehow crossed an invisible line from “new” to “experienced.”

One day you simply realize that people have started looking to you the same way you once looked to someone else.

I have been thinking about that a lot lately.

This year I’ve been asked to teach more classes than I ever expected. New pups stop me after workshops to ask questions they were too nervous to ask during class. Someone reads a blog post and sends me a message saying it helped them feel less alone. Someone else asks how I built Ruff Beacon because they want to create something that helps other people too.

Each interaction leaves me with the same quiet thought.

“When did I become this person?”

Twenty years ago, I certainly wasn’t.

When I first discovered pup play, I knew almost nothing. I watched from the edges of the room. I studied people who seemed impossibly confident. They knew where to stand, how to interact, what gear meant, who everyone was, and all of the unspoken rules that seemed obvious to everyone except me.

Like so many newcomers, I worried about asking the wrong question. I was convinced everyone else had some secret handbook that I’d somehow missed.

Looking back now, I realize something I couldn’t see then.

Most of those people probably felt exactly the same way when they started.

Experience has a funny way of disguising itself as confidence.

The people I admired weren’t born knowing how to mentor someone, teach a class, bootblack a pair of boots, or welcome a nervous newcomer. They learned because someone else took the time to answer their questions with patience instead of judgment.

That realization has changed the way I try to show up.

When someone approaches me after a class, I don’t see someone asking a basic question. I see a version of myself from twenty years ago, hoping they won’t be told they’re doing it wrong.

When someone messages me after reading a blog post, I remember searching forums and old websites hoping to find someone whose experience sounded enough like mine that I could stop wondering if I belonged.

When someone nervously introduces themselves at Pup Tea or another event, I remember what it felt like to spend an evening wondering whether anyone would talk to me first.

Those memories have become some of my most valuable teachers.

I’ve written before that I didn’t create Ruff. I rediscovered him. What I didn’t expect was that rediscovering myself would also change the way I see everyone else beginning that same journey.

Teaching has reinforced that lesson more than anything.

People sometimes assume education is about sharing information. Of course that’s part of it, but I’ve come to believe the more important part is giving people permission to ask questions they were afraid to ask. Sometimes the most valuable thing you can teach isn’t a technique or a safety practice. It’s the feeling that they belong here too.

I’ve started to realize that the people I admired twenty years ago probably never thought of themselves as experts either.

They were simply the people who stayed.

They kept showing up. They kept learning. They kept making mistakes, apologizing, growing, and helping the next person who arrived after them.

Maybe that’s all experience really is.

Not having all the answers, but remembering what it felt like to have none.

As I prepare to teach more classes, bootblack at Atlanta Leather Pride, and continue this journey toward the Georgia Pet & Handler Contest, I keep coming back to that thought.

If someone walks away from one of my classes feeling a little more confident, if a blog post encourages someone to attend their first event, or if a nervous newcomer decides to introduce themselves because something I said made this world feel a little less intimidating, then I’m honoring the people who quietly did that for me two decades ago.

Because that’s the strange thing about mentorship.

You spend years looking for the person you need.

Then one day, almost without realizing it, you discover you’re trying to become that person for someone else.