Warm Fuzzies with Jennifer Layte
Spiritual Director and Pastor Talks About What Her Two Dogs Taught Her About God
Spiritual director and pastor Jennifer Layte has published two books and is crowdfunding a third called Follower: How Getting Close to Jesus Brings You to Yourself. Jenn describes it as “spiritual formation book on identity, transformation, and stages of faith, using the story of Simon Peter as the narrative springboard for the discussion.” (You have until November 18 to pledge your support on Kickstarter.)
She is also founder of The Pilgrimage, a mostly online community of motley ex-evangelicals looking for a place to safely deconstruct their faith as they ache for community and continued connection to God. Her fourth annual online retreat, Winter Solace, will take place from January 10-11, 2025 featuring great speakers and workshops. (Full disclosure: This will be my second year leading a workshop. I will be talking on “Still God: How God Speaks to Us in Solitude and Disappointment” and how we discover He’s still God.”) Secure your spot for Winter Solace here.
I invited Jenn to All the Feel’s “Warm Fuzzies” to talk about her two rescue dogs, Chunk and Winnie, and some of the other dogs who’ve owned her.
1. What pets currently live with you?
Chunk is 40 compact pounds of dachshund/black-lab mashup who has been variously described as looking like "a black lab who was thrown in the dryer" and "an Ikea flat-pack that was missing a few pieces." We adopted him in 2020, three months after the death of my sweet cockapoo rescue, Oscar, who saw me through a cancer diagnosis in the early 2010's. Chunk's mostly low-energy but loves car rides and chasing his blue and orange ball--all 75 iterations of it that are all over the house.
We adopted Winnie last year. She's a 20 pound terrier variety-pack, who is visibly not that much smaller than Chunk, but much more slender, extroverted, and high energy. She adores walks--as many as you're willing to give her and as long as you want to make them.
2. Why do you own a pet? (How has owning a pet positively impacted your life, family, and/or mental health?)
We had pets when I was growing up, and we loved them, but probably partly because pets weren't quite family in the same way in the early 80's as they are now, and partly due to ignorance, my family as a whole and I specifically was not the best pet parent(s). Not abusive, but not optimal either. Oscar was the first pet I had as an independent adult, and (given the fact that my childhood dog was a small black cocker spaniel and Oscar was a small black cockapoo) I was conscious that adopting him was partly because I wanted to try again and do better with an animal.
But Oscar also took care of me through not only cancer, but the last stages of my singleness, including a complicated romantic relationship before I met my husband, and then accompanied me into the first eight years of married life. Oscar went to work with me every day during the job that I had at the time I got him, and though there will never be a replacement for him, he definitely carved out a place in my heart/spirit/soul that can only be appropriately occupied by a pet. Chunk and Winnie both have entirely different personalities--from Oscar and from each other--but the companionship, hilarity, and emotional support they provide is like nothing else. I have good human carers in my life, too, but the dogs reach a place that humans can't quite get at.
3. What is something your pet does that makes you laugh?
They're both little clowns, where Winnie is the jokeswoman and Chunk is the straight man. But here's a favorite scenario:
Chasing a thrown ball is Chunk's favorite thing, but Winnie could really care less about the ball itself. She's in it for the game, and the game she thinks she's playing is keep-away. For all his chunkiness (and the fact that he recently had surgery on his leg this year), Chunk is pretty agile and good at predicting where the ball's going to go, so he usually gets it. But every so often he fumbles, or misjudges, or somehow isn't quick enough, and then Winnie darts in and grabs the thing. At which point she does a little victory loop around the house (maybe two or three for good measure), and then prances back and forth in front of Chunk, blue-and-orange standard held high, shaking it at him a little, and growling "menacingly." Then of course Chunk has to pretend that he meant to let her have it and that he doesn't care that she got it away from him. Not at all.
Bonus funnies: When we got her, Winnie had already been trained by someone to sit up on her hindquarters and beg (we call it her meerkat pose), and Chunk is a master at the side-eye.
4. How has your (or any) pet embarrassed you?
Because we got him as a very young dog in 2020 when socializing anyone, let alone one's dogs, was extra difficult, and because we rescued him from a hoarding situation where all the other dogs were significantly larger than he is and bullied him (he had the bite marks to prove it), Chunk tends to be pretty reactive and unfriendly around other dogs. One reason (besides that she's super cute) that we adopted Winnie last year was that we hoped her extroversion and delight in all other dogs, children, people, chipmunks, and rabbits would rub off on him and he'd at least become more tolerable when we passed other dogs on walks.
Alas (and maybe predictably, actually), the opposite happened. Winnie's presence makes Chunk even more protective of his pack, and his apparent aggression eggs her on so that she beats him to the punch with very, very shrill and loud barking. (Notably, this only happens if they're walking together. Winnie likes walks more than Chunk does, and when she's on her own, she's fully appropriate.) The reactivity--and the fact that now some of our neighbors with dogs turn around and walk the other way when they see us coming-- is both frustrating and embarrassing. I'm currently experimenting with some new techniques on our walks, and both dogs do seem to be improving--if slowly--on their reactivity to other dogs. Today a lady we frequently pass on our morning walk said to her black lab, "See? They're getting better." So that was encouraging.
5. What has your pet taught you about God and/or faith?
I think one thing I've learned from all my dogs is presence--from both sides of the God/human relationship. Sometimes my dogs' unconditional love when I don't feel worthy--whether they know I'm feeling unworthy or not--and their desire to be near me no matter what is the real-life illustration I need of God's own unconditional love for me, and a picture of what grace looks like. Other times I'm struck with how willing they are to look to me for what they need. It's tempting to find begging annoying, but every so often I suspect the Holy Spirit points to them begging and says, "See that? I want you to be sure that I'll provide for you and ask that persistently anyway."
Be sure to check out Winter Solace '25, the online winter retreat through The Pilgrimage. It's a Friday night, all-day Saturday event with both large-group sessions, small-group breakout workshops, and multiple presenters. Everyone is welcome to join. And you have until November 18, to fund Jenn’s other project Follower: How Getting Close to Jesus Brings You to Yourself on Kickstarter to cover the upfront publication costs and raise awareness of and interest in the book.