Part 2: My Rescue Golden Retriever Slept Facing The Wall Every Single Night For Eight Months — A $1,400 Behaviorist Said It Was Depression, A Cross-Country Move Proved Her Wrong, And A Single Phone Call Broke Me Open
I want to tell this slow. There is no rushing it.
The first night in the new apartment, when Birdie walked past her dog bed and lay down on the bare hardwood floor against the opposite wall, I did not understand what I was watching.
I stood in the doorway of my new bedroom in pajamas at eleven o’clock at night with a glass of water in my hand and I tried to figure out why my Golden Retriever — who had spent eight months facing one specific wall in my old apartment — had completely ignored her bed and picked a different wall in this one.
My first thought was the obvious one. New space. She’s disoriented.
I went to bed.
I checked on her three times during the night. Each time, she was in the exact same position — lying on the hardwood with her face six inches from the wall, eyes open, not moving.
At six-thirty in the morning, I got up.
I stood in the doorway again. I looked at her. I looked at the wall she had picked. I looked at the wall the dog bed was against — the wall I had thought she would face.
I looked at my old apartment in my memory.
In my old apartment, her bed had been in the corner near the window. She had faced the wall to the right of that window. The wall that was — I tried to picture it — pointing roughly toward, I don’t know, east?
I pulled out my phone. I opened the compass app I had downloaded for hiking the year before. I walked to the spot where Birdie was lying. I held the phone parallel to her body.
The needle on the compass spun. It settled.
She was facing east.
Almost dead east. Within five degrees of true east.
I walked to where her dog bed was — the spot where I had thought she would lie down. I held the compass there. The needle settled in a different direction. That spot pointed roughly north.
She had ignored north.
She had picked east.
I sat down on the floor next to her. I tried to think.
The bedroom in my old apartment had been oriented with the bed against the south wall. The dog bed I had placed for Birdie had been in the east-facing corner — so when she lay down in it and turned toward the wall on the east side of that corner, she was facing east. I had thought she was facing the wall.
She had not been facing the wall.
She had been facing east.
For eight months.
I called the rescue at nine in the morning.
The volunteer who picked up was a woman named Cheryl Pak. Cheryl had been at the rescue when I had adopted Birdie back in March. She had been the one who had walked Birdie out from the kennels for our first meeting. She remembered me.
I said, “Cheryl. I’m sorry. This is going to sound strange. But — can I ask you about Birdie’s previous owner?”
She said, “Marin, hi. Of course. What do you want to know?”
I said, “Where did he live?”
She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “Hold on. Let me pull her file.”
I heard her typing. I heard pages turning.
She said, “Her previous owner was a man named Walter Brennan. He passed away on October 14th, 2024. He was eighty-three years old. He lived alone with Birdie for the last six years of his life. His address was 2847 Eastman Drive, Greenfield, Indiana.”
I opened Google Maps with my free hand. I typed in 2847 Eastman Drive, Greenfield, Indiana.
The map loaded. The pin dropped.
Greenfield, Indiana, is a small town about forty miles east of Indianapolis.
Greenfield is east of my new apartment.
I sat on the floor of my new bedroom with Birdie at my side and I stared at the pin on my phone and I started to understand what my dog had been doing for eight months.
I said into the phone, “Cheryl. I’m sorry. I have to call you back.”
She said, “Marin? Are you okay?”
I said, “Yes. I just — I have to check something.”
I hung up.
I opened the compass app again. I sat where Birdie had been lying. I oriented myself in the exact direction she had been facing. I pulled up the map and I drew, in my head, a line straight east from my new apartment.
The line went directly through Greenfield, Indiana.
It went directly through 2847 Eastman Drive.
The house where Walter Brennan had lived. The house where Birdie had slept for six years before he died.
She had been sleeping with her face pointed at her old home.
For eight months in my old apartment. For one night in this new one. Forty miles away.
She had not been depressed.
She had been homesick.
I want to write down what I did next because it is the part of this story that has stayed with me the most.
I sat on the hardwood floor of my new bedroom and I did not move for almost an hour. Birdie was lying about three feet from me, still facing east. She had not gotten up.
I started crying somewhere around minute ten. I did not stop for a long time.
I cried for Birdie, who had been doing the only thing she knew how to do to stay connected to a man she had loved for six years and who had disappeared from her life with no explanation she could understand. I cried for the three foster families who had returned her because they thought she was sad. I cried for the board-certified veterinary behaviorist who had diagnosed her with grief-related depression and put her on fluoxetine, and who had been — I now realized — almost right but completely wrong, because Birdie had not been depressed. Birdie had been waiting. She had been turning her face toward Walter’s house every single night because she did not know that Walter was not coming back.
I cried for Walter Brennan, who I had never met, but who had clearly loved this dog enough that she had spent eight months trying to find her way back to him in the only way she knew how.
And — I want to be honest with you — I cried for myself. I cried because I had spent two years trying to get over a man and a relationship I had loved and lost, and I had bought a dog because I thought we could be sad together and climb out of sadness together. And I had spent eight months thinking my Golden Retriever was depressed because she looked the way I had looked for two years. And it turned out she had not been depressed.
She had been pointed. Every night. At the place she had come from.
I had been pointed too. For two years. At a relationship that had ended in a coffee shop in February of 2023.
I had not figured out, for those two years, how to stop facing east myself.
And Birdie had been showing me, every single night for eight months, in the most literal physical way an animal can show a person something, what it looks like to keep your face pointed at a thing that is gone.
I called the rescue back at noon.
I asked Cheryl if Walter Brennan had any surviving family.
She said, “He had a daughter. Her name is Janet. She lives in Bloomington. She was the one who signed the surrender paperwork.”
I said, “Cheryl. Could I — would it be appropriate — could I write her a letter?”
Cheryl said, “Marin. I will give you her address. Yes. Write her a letter. Please.”
I wrote Janet Brennan a letter that afternoon. I did not type it. I wrote it by hand, with a pen, on stationery I had bought for thank-you notes after my breakup and had never used.
I told her I had adopted her father’s dog. I told her about the eight months of facing the wall. I told her about the move. I told her about the compass app and the line on the map. I told her I was so sorry for her loss. I told her I had taken a photo of Birdie in her new spot in the new apartment, facing east, and that I had enclosed it. I told her that if she ever wanted to meet Birdie — if it would be welcome, if it would help, if it would not hurt too much — I would drive Birdie to Bloomington any weekend she wanted.
I mailed the letter on a Monday in late December.
Janet wrote back on a Friday in early January. Her letter came in a small white envelope addressed to me in careful, slightly shaky handwriting.
She wrote: Marin. Your letter made me cry. My father had Birdie since she was a small puppy. He named her Birdie because his wife — my mother — had been an avid birder, and my mother had passed away in 2018, and Birdie had been the dog he got that year to keep him company. Birdie slept on the foot of his bed every night for six years. His bedroom in the house in Greenfield faces east. He always opened the curtains in the morning to let the sun in. Birdie has been waking up to the sunrise out of that bedroom window since she was three months old. She is not sleeping facing east in your apartment. She is sleeping facing the sun.
Yes. Please bring her. Any weekend. — Janet.
I read the letter three times.
I sat on my couch in the new apartment with Birdie’s head on my knee and I read it three times.
I drove Birdie to Bloomington on the second Saturday of January.
Janet Brennan was sixty-one years old. She was a retired English teacher. She lived in a small craftsman house with a porch swing and a pair of cardinals on a feeder in the front yard. She had her father’s eyes. She had thinning gray-brown hair pulled back in a soft low knot.
I brought Birdie up the front walk on a leash. Janet was waiting on the porch.
I want to tell you what Birdie did when she saw her.
Birdie stopped walking. She went still. She looked up at Janet.
Janet sat down on the second step of the porch and she said, very quietly, “Birdie. Birdie, honey.”
Birdie did not run. She did not jump. She walked the last ten feet of the front walk with the slow, careful, measured walk of a dog who had been very loved and who was no longer sure if love was still on offer. She stopped at Janet’s feet. She looked up at Janet’s face.
Janet held out her open hands.
Birdie pressed her forehead into Janet’s chest and she stayed there.
I stood on the front walk with the leash dropped on the concrete and I could not move.
Janet wrapped her arms around Birdie. She put her face into the soft cream fur on the top of Birdie’s head. She said, “You came back. Oh, sweetheart. You came back.”
I sat down on the bottom step of the porch and I cried as quietly as I could.
We sat in Janet’s living room for three hours. Janet made tea. She showed me photographs. She showed me Walter Brennan at sixty-five, then seventy, then seventy-five, then eighty — and in every photograph after 2018, there was a Golden Retriever puppy who grew into a young dog who grew into the dog who was now lying on the rug at our feet.
Janet told me about her father. She told me he had been a high-school principal for thirty-six years before he retired. She told me he had taught her to fish on a small lake in southern Indiana when she was eight. She told me he had buried her mother in the spring of 2018 and that he had not really been okay after that, and that the puppy he had brought home in October of that year had — by the family’s account — saved his life.
She told me her father had died in his sleep on October 14th, 2024.
She told me that Birdie had been the one to find him. That Birdie had been lying on the foot of his bed when he had passed, and that Birdie had not gotten off of him until the EMTs came eight hours later, and that the lead EMT had told Janet on the phone that the dog had been guarding him.
She told me she had not been able to take Birdie home with her after the funeral because her husband was severely allergic.
She told me she had cried for six weeks.
I told her about the eight months of facing the wall. I told her about the move and the compass. I told her I had felt, when I had figured it out, the way I have rarely felt about anything in my life — that I had been given a piece of information I was not large enough to hold.
Janet listened. She held Birdie’s head in her lap the whole time. She said, when I finished, “Marin. Honey. I think she knew that one day someone would figure it out and bring her back. I think she was waiting for that one day. I think she was telling you. She was telling whoever was paying attention.”
I said, “Janet. Do you want her? Do you want to take her back?”
Janet looked at me for a long time.
She said, “No, sweetheart. I can’t. Marc’s allergies. And — Marin. She is doing well with you. You figured this out. You drove her here. You wrote me a letter. I think — I think Daddy would want her to be where she is, and I think Daddy would want her to be allowed to come visit me whenever you can bring her, and I think Daddy would want you to know that you have done a much better job than you think you have.”
I started crying again.
Janet handed me a tissue.
She said, “Marin. Honey. You have done one thing for that dog that none of her three foster families and her behaviorist and a year’s worth of medication could not. You figured out what she was doing. You are taking care of a creature who has been pointing herself at a memory for over a year. That is — that is the work. That is what I would have wanted somebody to do for her. Thank you.”
I drove home that night with Birdie asleep in the passenger seat of my Subaru.
I cried about thirty miles of the trip home.
Birdie still faces east.
She has not stopped. I do not expect her to.
What has changed — and this is the part I want you to take away from this if you take anything — is the meaning of it.
For the first eight months, I thought my dog was depressed and I was failing to fix it.
Now I know my dog is keeping a compass. Now I know my dog is, every single night, pointing herself at the sunrise of a man named Walter Brennan in Greenfield, Indiana, who loved her for six years and who is buried in a small cemetery off Eastman Drive that I have now visited twice with her in the back of my car.
I take her to the cemetery on the second Saturday of every month. We sit by Walter’s grave for about an hour. She lies down with her head on his headstone. I drink coffee from a thermos. We do not stay long. We come home.
Janet comes with us sometimes. We have become friends. She comes over to my apartment in Indianapolis every other Sunday for dinner. Birdie greets her at the door with a wagging tail that has become, in the year since the move, more like the windmill wag of a young dog and less like the polite older-dog wag she had when I first brought her home.
She still sleeps facing east. She has, however, started to wag her tail in the morning when I come into the bedroom. She has started to bring me toys. She started chasing a ball in the dog park for the first time in March of this year.
She is becoming the dog she was before Walter died.
She is not forgetting Walter. She is not turning her face away from his sunrise.
She is just, slowly, learning that she can do both. She can love him and be alive too. She can keep her face pointed east at night and still play in the daytime.
I want to tell you the part I almost did not write down, because it is the part that has actually changed my life.
The week after I figured out what Birdie was doing, I made an appointment with a therapist for the first time in two years.
I had stopped going after my breakup because I had not been able to afford it and because I had told myself I was fine. I had not been fine. I had been doing — for two solid years — exactly what Birdie had been doing.
I had been facing east at night.
I had been pointing myself at a relationship that had ended in a coffee shop in February of 2023, every single time I lay down to sleep, in some quiet internal way I had not let myself name.
I had bought a dog because I thought she would face east with me.
What she did instead was face east better than I knew how to face east, in a way I could see from across a room, in a way I could measure on a compass app, in a way that made it impossible for me to keep pretending I was not doing the same thing.
I started therapy on the first Tuesday of February of this year.
I have been going every week since.
I am slowly turning around inside myself.
I am not all the way around yet. I do not know when I will be. I am not in a hurry.
Birdie has shown me that there is no shame in facing the direction you came from. There is only shame in pretending you are not doing it.
There is one more thing.
The first night I came home from my fourth therapy session in late February, I came into the bedroom and turned off the light. Birdie walked to her dog bed — the new one I had bought, the one she had finally started using in January, the one I had positioned on the east wall of the new apartment so she could face east comfortably.
She lay down. She turned her face to the east wall.
She lay there for about ten minutes.
Then she got up.
She walked over to my bed. She jumped up.
She had never gotten on my bed before. Not once. Not in the eight months in the old apartment. Not in the seven weeks in the new apartment.
She climbed onto the bed. She walked across the comforter to my side. She lay down behind me with her back pressed against my back, and her face pointed — I checked, in the morning, with the compass — west.
Toward me.
For the first time in eleven months.
She had not stopped facing east. She had just decided, that night, to face me first.
I cried into my pillow as silently as I could so that she would not get up. She stayed for the entire night.
She does it about once a week now. The other nights she still sleeps in her bed, facing east. I have stopped trying to change either pattern.
What I know is this. Birdie is not depressed. Birdie has never been depressed. Birdie is a five-year-old Golden Retriever who has been keeping a compass in her chest for over a year, and the compass points east at a small white house in Greenfield, Indiana, where a man named Walter Brennan used to open the curtains in the morning to let in the sun.
Some nights she still points east.
Some nights she points west, at me.
Both of those things are love.
I am — finally — old enough to know the difference.
CTA for end of post: If this story moved you, follow the page — there are more like Marin and Birdie I haven’t told yet.
