Why We Miss Important Details—And How to Forgive Ourselves When We Do

A trip to the Vet was a harsh reminder about a common thinking trap we all fall into.

We lost our gentle giant Ollie earlier this year, and our remaining dog, Bella, is a very sweet but challenging special needs dog.

When we rescued her at six months old, she didn’t have special needs. However, she had many issues with containing her excitement, understanding that not everyone wants to be her friend and impulse control. Impulses like chewing holes in the side of the house or shredding our clothes while hanging on us, the clothesline, or piled on the laundry floor.

As she turned two, she started having focal seizures and scaring us with her sudden Cujo impersonations. Bella would freeze, her jaw locked open in a grimace—caught between a snarl and silence, her body rigid from the grip of what we eventually discovered was epilepsy.

Thankfully, her impersonations weren’t a permanent transformation. Unlike Stephen King’s Cujo, she didn’t slowly transform into a frightening monster. A switch was flicked in her brain. She lost time, and so did we – trying to keep her safe.

Over six years, many trips to the specialist animal hospital and ever-increasing medication (she rattles), those frozen grimaces transitioned to grand mal, then extended absentia seizures.

Our constant focus is on keeping her safe during post-seizure. She temporarily loses her sight, darts back and forth, sprinting before suddenly freezing in place, then whipping around to repeat the cycle—an unpredictable dance of sudden stops, frantic turns and crashes. We’ve been assured she doesn’t know what is happening, but watching was and still is heart-wrenching.

Add canine ADHD, anxiety and fatty liver disease to the mix, and you could say we’ve come to associate lots of anomalies as just another one of Bella’s special needs.

Recently, we thought she’d hurt herself mucking around with our daughter’s playful dog and took her to the vet to review a sudden lump that appeared on her side.

The vet checked Bella’s general condition before looking at the unexplained lump. As soon as she placed her hands under Bella’s jaw, she looked at me and said, “Have these glands been swollen long?” I had no idea what she was talking about. And I still didn’t when she continued to explore, noting that all Bella’s lymph glands were swollen. We checked her for ticks all the time and didn’t have a clue what the vet was talking about.

It only took a minute to discover that the other lump was the least of Bella’s problems.

Possible Lymphoma. Unlikely to survive until Christmas. How had we missed the signs?

The signs that suddenly took on a whole new meaning once we knew about the unusually swollen lymph nodes. The weight loss put down to walking her more, the onset of highly noxious gas – hard to miss when she is lying in the office and I’m on a video conference.

The list of missed signs went on, and feelings of guilt started to build up.

That was until I remembered that we are hard-wired to make sense of nonsense, to explain away what doesn’t fit our mental picture of what we already know. Studies dating back to the 1940s have repeatedly shown that our brains are wired to discard anomalies so we can make sense of the confusion in our worlds.

However, as the Danish philosopher S?ren Kierkegaard said, “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards”.

Hindsight is like the beam from a lighthouse, sweeping past hidden rocks, illuminating what was once in shadow.

I’ve decided to discard the urge to engage in self-flagellation and recognise this as a choice point.

A choice to accept how I’m feeling, to let the sadness bubble up when needed, but not let it stop me in my tracks. To think about what’s next – what will make Bella’s last weeks a dog’s life well lived and then take steps to make that a reality.

I’m sharing this because, at times, we all miss what seems obvious in hindsight. This is a reminder that when it happens:

• Show yourself the same kindness you would a friend.
• Avoid letting your feelings overwhelm your ability to respond.
• Focus on the next right thing to do rather than obsessing over controlling the uncontrollable.
• Focus on the quality of the experience you can deliver.

If you’ve noticed an anomaly, this is also a reminder to be more curious and try to avoid the temptation to explain it away. Listen to what that little niggling feeling may be telling you.

The outcome may be inevitable, but how others experience your leadership is not.

#CognitiveBias #SelfCompassion #NavigatingUncertainty

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