THE LIGHT IN THE OTHER PRACTICE ROOM

Before allowing myself to stop practicing at night, I would look down from the boarding-school dormitory toward my friend’s practice room, and if her light was still on, I felt as though I could not leave.

Leaving first felt like losing.

My sister and I left home to attend a musical boarding school in a large Romanian city about an hour away by train when I was nine years old. At first, we returned home every weekend, but as I grew older and the required practice hours increased, those visits became less frequent because traveling home meant time away from the piano.

As many as fifteen girls slept in one room, in rows of narrow beds that made the dormitory look more like a hospital ward than a home. The rules were strict, and we were not allowed to put anything on the walls, so hanging a few flowers near our beds felt like an act of rebellion. Winters were cold, and every year we tried to arrive before the other girls so we could claim a bed away from the drafty windows. The food was terrible, and I usually skipped breakfast because fifteen more minutes of sleep felt more valuable than anything waiting in the dining hall.

My sister figured out that practicing for two hours before school was the best way to fit more into the day, and although I fought the idea more times than I can count, eventually I understood that if I wanted to get ahead, I could not always do only what everyone else was willing to do.
I began waking at five in the morning while the dormitory was still dark, waking the supervisor to unlock the door, crossing to the music school, and ringing the bell until the guard let us inside. Neither was particularly happy to see us, but we kept doing it anyway, and before the regular school day began, we had already practiced for two hours.

Competition did not exist only during examinations and recitals. It lived with us every day.

One of my closest piano friends was also one of my greatest competitors, and before stopping for the night, I checked whether the light in her practice room was still burning. Sometimes I stood outside her door and listened to determine how far she had progressed with a difficult piece.
I wish I could say that I always hoped she was playing beautifully, but when she struggled, part of me felt relieved because if she had not mastered the passage, perhaps I was not falling behind.

She was my friend, but she was also the person against whom I measured myself. I loved her, competed with her, watched her, and sometimes quietly felt better when she struggled because I did not yet understand that her talent took nothing away from mine.

Being ahead simply felt safer than being left behind.

We do not always dislike people because they have done something wrong. Sometimes we dislike what their excellence makes us feel about ourselves, and we search for a weakness in them because finding one gives us temporary relief from confronting what may be missing within us.

I carried that pattern with me long before I understood it.

My parents bred and showed poodles in Europe, but when I came to the United States, I entered a very different dog world. Grooming, conditioning, presentation, and showing were different, and although I had grown up around poodles, I quickly realized how much I still needed to learn.

I remember bringing an apricot male to Kaz for grooming and evaluation, and I was immediately impressed and eager to absorb everything he was willing to teach me.

“I cannot explain all of this in words,” he told me. “I want you to feel a quality dog, then put your hands on yours and compare.”

Kaz allowed me to put my hands on his dogs and showed me what a beautiful poodle face should feel like beneath the coat, where refinement needed to be balanced with strength, and how the whole dog should come together. He told me that I needed a black poodle so I could study quality in strong, established black dogs and then use that understanding to improve my reds.

He was not asking me to stop loving my dog. He was asking me to evaluate him honestly.

I could have become defensive and called Kaz arrogant because that would have been easier than admitting he could recognize qualities I could not yet see or feel.

Instead, I listened.

What followed was not an apprenticeship handed to me on a platter. While attending school and working full time as a veterinary technician, I drove from Maryland to Delaware and followed Kaz to weekend dog shows, sometimes in an old car that I was not certain would get me home. This was before GPS guided us everywhere, so I carried printed Google Maps directions and hoped I would not miss a turn.

Instead of catching up on sleep, I arrived at the kennel early to help, observe, and learn. I watched dogs being groomed, conditioned, evaluated, and presented, and I stored away lessons whose importance would not become clear until years later.

Kaz must have seen every bit of my inexperience, but he did not use what he knew to prove how little I knew. He showed me what needed improvement, told me to work harder, and allowed me to keep returning and learning.

Kaz did not protect me from the truth, but he did protect my willingness to learn.

I wish I could say that because he treated me with patience, I always extended the same patience to others.

I did not.

After gaining experience, I sometimes watched novice people showing their dogs and immediately noticed their awkward handling, grooming mistakes, poor timing, and lack of preparation. I was quick to criticize, while failing to see myself in them.

I forgot how inexperienced I must have looked beside Kaz. I forgot the unreliable car, printed directions, exhausting drives, questions, mistakes, and everything I did not yet understand. Most importantly, I forgot that Kaz had recognized my inexperience without treating me as though I had no potential.

I began doing to novice handlers what he could have done to me but chose not to do.

Was I truly protecting the standard, or did knowing more than someone else make me feel safer about how much I still did not know? Was I helping that person improve, or using her inexperience to reassure myself that I had advanced?

It was the competition from the boarding-school practice rooms wearing different clothes. Once again, someone else’s struggle could make me feel better about my progress.

We do this throughout the dog world. We see a beautiful dog and immediately search for a fault. Someone wins, and we blamej politics. A novice enters the ring, and instead of remembering our own beginning, we notice every mistake. Someone breeds, feeds, raises puppies, or approaches health differently, and rather than first asking why, we decide that person must be ignorant or irresponsible.

Sometimes the concern is legitimate; other times, it is insecurity disguised as protecting the breed.

My veterinary experience and continued studies in nutrition, genetics, reproduction, husbandry, and natural health led me to question routine practices and change how I fed, bred, and raised my dogs. Some people became curious, while others dismissed my choices without understanding the years of work, observation, education, sacrifice, mistakes, and experience behind them.

People do not always reject an idea because it is wrong. Sometimes they reject it because it forces them to ask an uncomfortable question:

What if there is another way?

I know what it feels like to be misunderstood, but I also know what it feels like to stand outside another girl’s practice room and feel relieved when she struggles, and I know what it feels like to criticize a novice while forgetting that I was once the novice.

This problem does not belong only to those who criticize me.

Being misunderstood does not give me permission to misunderstand others, and conviction without humility can become another form of pride. That does not mean standards should be abandoned or that every choice is equally responsible, because there is a difference between objecting when dogs may genuinely be harmed and attacking someone simply because her work challenges our pride.

There is also a difference between protecting a standard and humiliating someone who has not yet learned how to reach it.

Patience does not require accepting poor handling, inadequate knowledge, or careless breeding. It means remembering that none of us arrived knowing everything and that correction can either awaken someone’s potential or crush it before it has the opportunity to develop.

The dog world needs experienced people willing to teach and beginners humble enough to listen, work, and continue showing up when the truth is uncomfortable.

The little girl watching another practice-room light did not understand that someone else’s work could not threaten her own. The inexperienced woman beside Kaz did not know how many years it would take for his lessons to fall into place. The breeder who later criticized novice handlers had forgotten the patience that made her own growth possible.

Now, before criticizing someone, I try to ask why that person bothers me. Is an animal genuinely being harmed, or has she touched an insecurity I have not healed? Am I defending a necessary standard, or am I still watching the light in someone else’s practice room because I am afraid to turn off my own?

The greatest work is not proving that my way is better or ensuring that my light remains on longer than hers.

It is becoming secure enough to admire excellence, humble enough to remain a student, patient enough to guide a beginner, and faithful enough to protect the lives God has placed in my care. ❤️🐾❤️