You Don’t Own a Dog
Some love doesn’t ask.
It doesn’t wait.
It sits beside you
and breathes.
The language we use
We talk about dogs like property.
My dog.
Our dog.
As if a living being could belong to us.
But anyone who has actually lived with a dog knows that word never quite fits.
What happens there feels closer to a meeting than an arrangement.
A bond that doesn’t explain itself.
It just shows up every day and stays.
Presence without strategy
Humans are careful with love.
We negotiate it.
We protect it.
We keep score.
Dogs don’t do that.
They don’t calculate whether affection will be returned.
They don’t check if today is safe to be open.
They don’t hold back in case tomorrow hurts.
They are simply there.
And that’s unsettling, because it exposes how rarely we are.
I don’t expect anyone to pay to read. But if you’d like to support it, gift me a book.
Two ways of being
Most of us live split in half.
One foot in memory.
One foot in anticipation.
A dog lives almost entirely in what’s happening.
No story about who it used to be.
No anxiety about who it needs to become.
No private narrative running in the background.
So when you sit with a dog, two worlds touch.
You, thinking and narrating.
The dog, responding.
It doesn’t meet your identity.
It meets your presence.
That’s why the connection feels immediate.
Love before conditions
Human love rarely stays simple.
Sooner or later, conditions sneak in.
I’ll stay if you stay.
I’ll love you if you change.
I’ll give if you reassure me.
A quiet contract forms.
A dog doesn’t sign it.
It loves without prerequisite.
Not as a virtue.
Not as a moral achievement.
But as its natural way of being.
This is what people mean when they speak about grace.
Love that doesn’t need to be earned.
Why it hurts so much
Losing a dog feels disproportionate.
Embarrassingly deep.
But that’s because the bond wasn’t built on words.
It was built on rhythm.
Routine.
Shared silence.
You don’t lose a story when a dog dies.
You lose a way of being.
A place where you could rest without defending yourself.
That’s what hurts.
The lesson no one asks for
Dogs don’t stay long.
And that isn’t a mistake.
If love never ended, we’d treat it casually.
We’d confuse it with ownership.
Because it ends, it reveals itself as participation.
Something entered.
Not something kept.
Grief isn’t the opposite of love.
It’s love with nowhere to go.
A final question
When a dog looks at you, it isn’t asking for guarantees.
It isn’t asking for permanence.
It’s asking something quieter and harder.
Can you live like this too?
Without armor.
Without control.
Without knowing what comes next.
If you can, even for a moment,
the dog has already done what it came to do.
Comments
Post a Comment