When Mary was little she was a happy, energetic, feisty girl, a tomboy by most measures.  She was connected to the real world, loved the outside, loved animals, loved anything tactile.  And she always had projects, nonstop.  She drew and created and sewed and played music and played sports and climbed trees and caught snakes and fish.  She had friends and 2 close siblings, her older brother Spencer which she adored and looked up to, but who was wildly different, as cerebral as they come and her 2 year younger sister izzy who followed Mary around like a sidekick. Her friends, in retrospect, were due largely because she was so good at everything.  People looked up to her to lead things, but she was not a leader, not even that truly interested in other people.  She always wanted a best friend, but it was an idealized version. Hungry to have the friend she was supposed to have, a partner in her endeavors, but valuable as a partner, not as some inherent love of people.  Groups, although she was surrounded by peoplle, were not easy for her.  When people would sit around and talk, she hated it and wanted to be doing something.  But for the most part, her childhood was idyllic as a young girl. We lived in Bellingham which has amazing outdoors and she had freedom to do what she was compelled to do.  But when she hit 12 or 13, things went downhill fast. Her peers were changing into teens, and those girl groups were not what she was used to, social exploration, trying to fit in, gossip, status.  This was complicated by the arrival of social media (this was 2012/2013), which was already everywhere, but very stressful for Mary.  She was realizing the old Mary was supposed to “grow up” and she, in her explicit, non-social way, was trying to figure out what that meant with not much success.  This led to serious mental health issues, in particular regarding her weight but also her skin, nose, hair… remember she was a very physically oriented person.  Not like “looks” oriented, but physically focused.  At age 13 she had spiraled downward fast.  She mostly didn’t see anyone anymore, she was very angry and very scared. There was self harm.  Her very loving family and especially her parents were shocked and desperate and tried everything they could think of.  Letting her have freedom, counseling, confrontation.  They had not seen this coming anymore than Mary did. And the once very close family was being torn up.  Spencer was starting off to college, and Izzy was also retreating, terrified of what was happeneing to Mary.  The tight friend group didn’t know what to make of this.  Right about then, Mary saw a video about dog training. And as always (really always) she became obsessed.  Which was  a Lot better than alternatives, in her parents perspective. After months of this and at the same time hitting a very scary bottom, she put alll her chips in on getting a dog that she could train.  As in this is my last chance.  And her parents, who had resisted, assuming this was just a weird phase and then who would care for the dog, and were they even set up to have a dog, finally agreed that anything was worth a shot.  So the family got in the minivan and drove 200 miles to Oregon where Mary had found a breeder with an Australian shepherd puppy, one of the last of the litter.  It felt like all or nothing.  She grabbed that puppy and it would not leave her side once for the next 7 years.  Getting home, she started in on her training project, and as things do, everything was tougher than she thought.  She was frustrated and still full of anger and sadness, but something had changed. And every night she would take her, who she had named Secret (what was that about thought the parents?), they could see she finally had a focus, something to work on that wasn’t *her*.  And something she could just make better and better (unlike herself where she couldn’t understand the rules of the social game and the *improvemenets* required in “grouwing up”).  

After some weeks and months, she had Secret shaking and bowing and weaving through her legs, and more.  And that dog started to feel like she knew she was there for a reason.  She was Mary’s dog, could hardly care about the rest of the family or anyone else.  And like Mary, she was born to work, to do.  Mary had finally found a partner, who was fast becoming that best friend.  Because she needed her at all times, Mary started to realize she had to train Secret as a service dog, to be perfect everywhere, in restaurants, on  planes.  And this was just the kind of goal that Mary was good at, and Secret turned out to be as well.  

After a few months, Mary turned back to social media, but this time for Secret.  She created an account, my_auddie_gal, and started posting pictures of her pup.  People loved it and soon she had hundreds  of followers.  Then she started adding simple trick videos, and she had found a community of people who cared about what she cared about, and who were supportive and excited for her.  One day she posted a video of her and Secret doing an Irish dance, something she had done for years with friends when she was younger.  It was quite a set of complicated moves for a dog, and after she posted it, an old friend texted her whole old friend group to say “Mary is going viral!”  She got 100’s of thousands of views from all over the world when a dance group from Ireland posted it on their popular Facebook channel. 

This was working.  She had pulled out of her tailspin.  She had something external to her to work on, infinitely.  And she had unconditional love and acceptance.  Who needed that social life thing?  And now social media was providing that social life, as people from all over the world were commenting on her videos and messaging her.  

But now what?  She turned 15.  She had been “homeschooled” for the past few years, but really had not been doing anything.  And now what?  Everyone she knew was heading towards college.  So she did the most Mary thing and decided that she, and Secret, were going to take classes using Running Start at the local Whatcom Community College.  She spent weeks ahead of time taking Secret to empty classrooms at off hours to get her used to being there. She trained Secret at parks and stores to get her used to large groups of people, and then she did it. Slowly at first, but over time she took classes to get her back in the game.  Meanwhile, social media just kept going crazy.  A rapper, Lil Wayne posted a compilation of her videos on his Facebook account and it got over 100 million views.  She was bombarded with “influencer” propositions, but didn’t care about any of that.  It was just her and Secret seeing what she could do next.  She graduated with her associate degree from WCC right as covid hit, and set about applying to a 4 year school.  She wanted to go to UW where her dad and brother had gone.  But how could she live away from home with Secret?  And how could she get in?  Well, she kept grinding and taking pre-requisites, and did her application and after getting on the wait list, wrote a letter saying why she should be let in and they said yes!  Now, people around the world were used to her crazy videos.  Her “sledding dog” video got featured on SportsCenter top 10.  Her painting videos had comments from Chelsey Clinton and Mark Hamill.  She was being recognized on trips and going out in the world.   And she kept pushing the envelope: secret playing Jenga, secret playing guitar, baking a cake, playing hide and go seek (and understanding the game), cleaning the house, and on and on.  She was up to 2.5 million followers and 8 million on the new TikTok!  

And then it was off to UW, in the fall of 2021.  Her mom came along for the first quarter and Mary got a cool apartment with Secret and they set about becoming Huskies.  They started to make new friends, she discovered she loved languages so decided to major in Asian languages and culture and was getting fluent in Japanese.  And the world loved them.  

And then, it started with a little limp.  Maybe Secret had turned an ankle?  But no, it didn’t go away.  We all tried to avoid it.  But then at the start of 2022, Mary took secret into the vet and got the awful news: her blood work suggested cancer.  I won’t go into the details, I’ll just say one of her most common comments was “I can’t imagine what it will be like when that dog dies”.  Well, it was time to start imagining.  And to say Mary was  thrown would be the wildest understatement.  She asked to quit school for now and set about trying to cure her.  Amazingly, a vet named Dr. Sullivan happened to be right here in Bellingham, her home town and was one of only 2 vets that was doing bone marrow transplants on dogs.  Mary’s dad had been a donor at the Fred Hutchinson center in Seattle 30 years prior to Mary’s uncle Dan.  And he was still going strong 30 years later.  And Mary’s sister helped organize a GoFundMe that tens of thousands of people donated to, an unbelievable outpouring of support, providing the money for the expensive treatment. It seemed like the universe was on Mary’s side. But that’s only in movies.  After months of brutal chemo and daily vet and labs and pouring over bloodwork, and only 1 week before Secret was set to go to LA for radiation and the transplant, Secret couldn’t hold on anymore.  

As she had been getting worse, Mary, so attuned, started to see in Secret’s eyes that she was trying to hold on for Mary.  In pain and being crushed by Leukemia, a disease that no dog has survived, Secret was trying so hard because she could see how important she was to Mary.  In Mary’s book, I Made a Promise, she says it was then when “she made a promise to Secret.  she said the hardest thing she ever had to say, 4 words, 11 letters, “I will be okay”.  It was the night before she passed away, and Mary could instantly see relief in Secret.  

With that promise Mary handled things the way she does, with action. She set up a foundation with the remaining money to work on cancer cures for dogs.  She went to work for the summer at the vet that had treated Secret, and she started to think about how she could “go on” as she had promised, getting back to UW.  Once, Secret visited her in a super real dream, to tell her not to worry, and that she had a promise for her too, that she would be ok and could love another dog.  It would be different, but that is what she was meant to do.  So she started looking and found an amazing breeder in Utah who let her visit them and just meet all the puppies.  One of those dogs made a clear connection with her, and at first she thought it was Secret coming back.  But she realized no, this is a new dog, and Secret is helping me find her and she will watch over us.  That dog was (and is) a blue merle Australian Shepherd  named Promise.  And Mary had a new start.    The story ends here, but an important epilogue is that she went back to UW with promise, and graduated in 2024 with her degree.  At the graduation she wrote “we did it Secret” on her graduation cap.  Promise walked onto stage with her to get “their” diploma.