Sit Spot

Sit Spot

What makes a recovery story truly inspiring? For many, it's the small, quiet moments that change everything, and that's exactly where this episode lands. Brad Orsted shares a story he's never shared publicly before, centred on his German Shepherd, Doc, and a wild mountainside that became his lifeline in early sobriety.

You’ll hear about a dream that wouldn’t let him go — Doc limping on his right front leg — and the shock weeks later when, after joyful play in the snow, that same leg suddenly failed him.

As Brad puts it, “That dream came back to me like a fist.” The episode mixes gentle humour with raw honesty: tackling a runaway dog in the leaves, freezing in a twisted position in bed so as not to disturb Doc, and listening in stillness as Doc lifts his face to the moon and lets out “the loneliest howl” Brad has ever heard. It’s heartbreaking and oddly funny in the way real life usually is.

The heart of the story is a hike to Brad’s “sit spot” under an old spruce in the Absaroka–Beartooth Wilderness, the place he ran to “time and time again in early sobriety” to breathe, pray and just stay alive. Taking Doc there for the first time, watching him curl up in a fresh grizzly bear day bed beside that sacred tree, cracks something open.

Brad realises, “Maybe healing, like love, needs a witness,” and that his witness has arrived on four paws. This episode speaks to anyone sitting with grief, addiction, or that heavy sense of being the only one. It’s about nature, animals, and how two broken beings can, for a moment, feel almost whole together. If you’ve ever needed your own sit spot or wished for a witness to your pain, this story might nudge you to step outside and find one.