Before social media and the animal rights and rescue movements, there was this idea that people should mind our own business. I knew little about the interior lives of other people’s dogs and they knew little about mine.

My grandmother taught me that if I stuck my nose in other people’s business, the fairies would bite it off. I got it. We live in a different world now, anyone who writes about dogs or animals online is familiar with the new ethics and boundaries of the new technology: everyone you do is everyone’s business.

Of course my grandmother would have cut her arm off rather than share her life on Facebook. I know that. But she wasn’t a writer.

If you share your life, you are asking for it in some ways, which compounds the problem. Every time I have ever mentioned a dog on my blog or Facebook, I have received cautions, alarms, warnings and horror stories. Dogs should not ride in cars, walk off leash, be out in the cold, or the heat, or in the woods, or running in a meadow, or in dirt, or near manure, or around ponies or donkeys, eat commercial foods. My dogs are analyzed for their weight, their coats, their gait, their interactions with one another.

I hear scores of horror stories and cautions every day – dogs suffocated in cars, run down on country roads, eaten by coyotes, lost in the woods, stolen out of back yards, brought down by infections, choked to death by bad collars, strangled in dangerous crates poisoned by bad food.

There is this idea in the animal world that we can guarantee animals the perfect lives we shall never have, and we never seem to grasp that it is not possible.

People tell me – as if I didn’t know – that heat is dangerous in cars, rabid animals are in meadows, dogs get lost in the woods, or bitten by rabid skunks and raccoons, or hit by lightning, or stolen if they are outside. Or run over.

I am used to this now, although I periodically raise the issue of boundaries when it reaches a certain point. I can tell you with pride that I have never messaged any person with a dog and warned them about the things they have decided to do. I hope I never will.

Fate being on the ice has drawn the concern of a number of people who are cautioning me that I am flirting with tragedy. It just took a while longer than usual.

On this pond, which is about six inches deep,  and quite small, I do not believe I am taking any risks with her, nor do I really believe – I’m being honest here – that it is anyone’s business but mine. Independence is my natural gear, I do not care to share too many of my decisions with other people or justify them. I don’t wish to worry about them all either. And even the Dalai Lama would struggle with being second-guessed as often as I am. And I, sir, am no  Dalai Lama.

I love my blog, but I do sometimes remember the days when I would write in peace without confronting the fears and alarms of strangers.

I agree with my grandmother.Absent evidence of extreme cruelty and abuse, I believe as she did, that it is rude to mind the business of other people without invitation. I love my dogs and worry plenty about them, I have never lost one to an accident or the woods or to a pond. Why, I wonder, do I have to keep repeating that?

“I worry about Fate,” Jeannie messaged me, “I don’t want to see a tragedy.” I told Jeannie that it is my job to worry about Fate, she can worry about her own dogs and cats.  She needs to take care of herself,  not me. People don’t like it when I say that, they think I am being sarcastic or superior.

I don’t ask anyone to worry about my dogs, and I’m glad they are loved and followed, but boundaries are not simply an idea for Dr. Phil, they are important to health and well-being,  a real challenge when it comes to identity in the age of social media. A threat to identity. It is absolutely my responsibility to worry about the animals in my care, and I take it very seriously. It is a violation both of space for boundary for anyone to presume to take that from me, to steal from me my obligation to care for my animals well. It is not theirs to take.

This is what the shrinks call co-dependence, the taking on of other people’s problems. Facebook is a giant incubator of co-dependence.

It is also a creative challenge. No writer or artist wants to live or think or create with a thousand voices in his or her head shouting warnings and alarms.

If I can’t take care of my animals well, and believe me, I do, I am not worth reading or following or paying attention to. A good and thoughtful man (I’ll call him Jack)  was upset with me for writing on Facebook that he needn’t worry about Fate and the ice, that was my job. He was also, he said, wanting to avert tragedy. I said, being flip (I get a lot of messages) that he needn’t worry about Fate. He was unhappy with me.

“I  actually no longer have my Brittany’s Jon,” he wrote back. “I lost my two in a horrible accident not long ago. I also have a good friend who lost a beautiful German Shorthair in an ice break accident. He almost drowned trying to save her. I love reading your stories here and have several of your books.  Your response makes it sound like I was questioning how you take care of your dogs. That’s the last thing I was doing. I just don’t want to see any harm come to you or Fate. I’m surprised that you would be defensive and sarcastic towards someone showing sincere concern”

I know the script calls for me to feel badly and apologize, and I was tempted. I am sorry about Jack’s Brittany’s. But I felt that was a manipulation. I have lost many dogs in different ways, it is not Jack’s problem, I would not suggest to him that he feel bad because Lenore and Fried and Simon died around the same time.

And he was, of course, was questioning how I take care of my dogs. What else would be be doing?

An honest and pained note from a very nice and thoughtful man.

I was actually just being my harassed and abrupt online self. But he perhaps can’t know that I can’t be defending my animal decisions to thousands of people every day from all over the world for everything I do or say or write.  There are many Jacks out there worrying about my dogs.

And the sad truth is that his painful loss had nothing to do with me or my dogs, or what Fate does or doesn’t do.

I imagine everyone reading this has lost a dog or two. I have not lost any dogs to any kind of accident, and I will work hard to prevent that.

This is the new and virulent form of digital co-dependence write large, my grandmother’s unimaginable nightmare.

I can’t accept this idea that I should take in the tragedies and losses of other people, and they should take from me my worry and concern. His tragedy is not mine, and my dangers are not his. That is the boundary.

Tens of thousands of animals die in sad ways every day, I cannot take all of them in, that would be my ruin. So Jack is raising important questions about the the boundary that needs to be built and maintained if any kind of individualism and privacy is to survive in this new world of communal concern.

I have a good friend who walked his dogs in the same woods I walk with Red and Fate, and both were attacked by a rabid fox, one died from infections and the other was nearly blinded and had to be put down. Was my friend reckless or uncaring by taking the dogs there? Should he never have walked his dogs out there? Should I never walk in those beautiful woods?

Animals, like people, are subject to dangers and accidents if they are to live in this world beyond basements and back yards. A neighbor had a tree fall on her while she was walking her dogs on her own property.

I am not looking to offend or insult anyone when I write of this joyous puppy and her explorations of the small pond in the woods. Animals who live in the wild take these risks every day, and no one objects to their being there. No deer should ever live near any road. The irony is that no one in the world could worry about my dogs more than I do, my heart and my livelihood depends upon it.

If Fate were to go through this ice, she would go in up to her knees and I would be three seconds away to pull her out.

I’d prefer to work it out this way, writing about it, as I will continue to try to do. I will share my life with you openly and honestly and take a lot of photos to go with it. I hope my readers find my writing entertaining and informative.

It is not my job to worry about you, it is not your job to worry about me. It is my job to take care of myself and the living things I am responsible for. When this happens, I always think of poor Thoreau, out on Walden Pond in his cabin, if he had brought Facebook he would have thrown himself into Walden Pond and drowned in worry.

I welcome your comments and thoughts and stories, they inform and enlighten and sustain me, but there is a difference between sharing a life and giving it away.

I have fought very hard for my identity and my truth, it is not, in this new world, a struggle that is ever over and is ever won or resolved. I will bear with you as we try to work it out, I hope you will bear with me.