Now that I’m home more, I’ve made a slightly unsettling discovery.
My dogs know things.
Not normal things.
Not just where the treats are hidden or which neighbor is morally suspicious.
I mean emotional things.
Rosie can sense a bad mood forming before I even know it exists.
I’ll be standing in the kitchen pretending to be fine, stirring coffee like I’m filming a commercial called Man Who Is Absolutely Thriving… and suddenly she appears beside me like a tiny, furry intervention.
No questions.
No analysis.
Just contact.
Benji takes a more physical approach to therapy.
If I sigh too loudly or sit down like a man who recently Googled “can you restart your entire life before lunch,” he climbs directly onto my chest as if I am a flotation device in the open waters of Existential Crisis.
Sir.
This is not how lungs work.
And yet somehow…it helps.
We spend so much of our lives trying to be understood by other people.
We explain ourselves.
We rehearse conversations in the shower like we’re preparing closing arguments for the case of Why I Am Actually Fine.
We say, “That’s not what I meant.”
“You’re missing the point.”
“I’m fine.”
The last one is particularly popular among people who are absolutely not fine.
But a dog looks at you once—one long, steady, unnervingly wise look—and somehow downloads the entire emotional forecast of your soul.
No language.
No judgment.
No helpful podcast recommendations.
Just…
I know.
They don’t care about your résumé, your reputation, or whatever story you’re currently telling yourself about who you were supposed to become.
They notice different things.
The tremor in your hands.
The way your shoulders carry yesterday.
The silence between your breaths.
Sometimes I catch Rosie watching me from across the room like she’s reading subtitles I cannot see.
Sometimes Benji rests his head on my chest and sighs so deeply it feels like he is forgiving me for things I haven’t even admitted yet.
Which is remarkably generous for someone who ate a tissue twenty minutes ago.
We like to think we’re the advanced species.
We built cities.
Invented airplanes.
Performed heart transplants.
Created passwords so complicated that absolutely no human being can remember them.
Meanwhile, dogs figured out the thing we've been struggling with since the beginning:
Stay.
That's it.
They don't fix.
They don't lecture.
They don't need the backstory.
They just stay.
Granted, Rosie will occasionally interrupt this sacred ministry to bark at a leaf, and Benji has eaten things that would require a priest, veterinarian, and possibly an exorcist.
Still…
they stay.
On the good days.
On the days when you’re funny and productive and easy to love.
And on the days when you sit quietly staring out a window wondering how your life became your life.
Especially those days.
I used to think I took care of my dogs.
Fed them.
Walked them.
Protected them.
Made sure they knew they were loved.
Now I’m beginning to wonder if I misunderstood the assignment.
Maybe they were sent to sit beside the parts of me no human conversation could ever reach.
And maybe when God wants to hold a hurting heart, He doesn't always send an answer.
Sometimes…
He sends a dog.
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