Pet may help relieve stress of difficult season

Erin Crocker is stepping up a program that she hopes will land her in a full-time Nextel Cup ride by driving in the Busch, Truck and ARCA Series for Evernham Motorsports. The youngest of five children, Crocker has been sharing weekly with NASCAR.COM readers the ups and downs of her life on and off the track through staff writer David Newton.

	Credit: Autostock
	Erin Crocker Year-to-date statistics Race Start Finish Daytona 24 27 California 33 27 Atlanta 30 26 Martinsville 34 25 Gateway 30 22 Charlotte 2 18 Mansfield 25 28 Dover 25 24 Texas 12 33 Michigan 11 24 Milwaukee 33 25 Kansas 12 16 Kentucky 34 27 Memphis 34 30 IRP 33 27 Nashville 27 29 Bristol 31 35 Average 24.9 25.5

I've been thinking a lot lately about getting a dog.

I love animals and last year I almost got two Persian cats, but then I talked myself out of it because they would have been a little bit too much to handle with my schedule and living in an apartment.

I had a lot of pets growing up. At one point we had two dogs, two cats and three birds. I'm the youngest of five, so there also were a lot of kids running around. As I look back it was kind of like an animal house.

I had a Siberian husky when I was in college. My mom was the only one at home, and she was not much of an animal person but she took care of it because she knew I couldn't have it at school.

One day she called and said she had this nice family with two kids that were dying to have her. Since I wasn't there to take care of it myself, I couldn't tell her no.

You see a lot of drivers with animals at the track. It cracks me up to see them bringing them to the airport and putting them on the planes.

That book [Pit Road Pets: NASCAR Stars and Their Pets] that Chrissie Newman and Ryan Newman wrote was a real good idea. If you look at some of the comments from the owners, what they say really makes sense.

A dog or a cat, they don't know how your day went. They're always excited to see you. They're always in a good mood.

That's one thing I always loved about my dogs. No matter what they're wagging their tails and excited to see you whether you had the worst day or the best day.

I could probably use a pet now the way things have been going with our truck team.

Jason Keller worked down my truck last week at Bristol to help get the setup right before I climbed in. I had mixed emotions about it. There were really no negatives other than you're missing practice and feeling like you're not good enough to do it yourself.

	Erin Crocker and Patrick Donahue are looking to turn things around Credit: Autostock
	WORK TO DO •   Team director Donahue forging bond with Crocker

But Jason has had success at short tracks and one thing I struggle with is telling the crew what I feel so they can make the right adjustments. With Jason, they can get feedback right away and get the truck close so I can get in it and compete.

But a part of me feels like I should be able to do that by now. We're three-quarters of the way through the season, and I should be able to tell my team what they need to know.

The reality of it is I struggle with that. I need to do what's best for the team, and the fastest way for me to learn is to get the truck set up so the team knows what they've got.

It was the same way at Charlotte when Kasey Kahne got in the truck for a few laps. We're pretty close as far as what we want in the setup.

What Jason complained about, what he wanted changed, we never really fixed the problem. When I got in the truck I felt the same thing.

But I listened to what he was telling the crew when he was on the track. I also listened to how he described things. Sometimes I feel things and I don't really know how to describe them.

Sometimes it's like, "Oh, yeah! I felt that. Why didn't I explain it like that?'' Just different wording can make the crew adjust something totally different.

I also watched the lines he ran. Anywhere, the line you run is really important.

We still had our problems. I was entering Turn 1 about 100 laps in, and as soon as my spotter said there's a spin in Turn 2 I let up a tiny bit and another truck got into me.

SUPERSTORE •   Get Erin's gear!

It turned me into the fence and it messed up the whole right front suspension. By the time they had it anywhere near fixed we were down eighty-something laps and it wasn't worth getting back on the track.

It was not what I needed or the team needed. Bristol is a hard place to go to and start rebuilding, which we decided to do a few weeks ago. But we knew that going in, so we'll have to learn from it and move on.

I don't run again for a few weeks until New Hampshire. There's been some talk about me running another ARCA race. I may go home and spend some time with my family and get away from everything.

Sometimes my confidence gets down and things go wrong. I worry about stuff too much. I think about stuff too much. A little break to get my thoughts together is something I may need to do.

Maybe I'll go look for a dog. It won't be too long before I get one.