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Dogs really are our best friends

Dogs really are our best friends.

Ingrid has a little Chihuahua named Brownie, because of course, that’s his color. Cutest little thing you ever saw.

Every morning when I pick Ingrid up for school Brownie comes running to me. He goes to the sofa where he can barely jump high enough to get on, but he eventually makes it.

He waits for our morning routine in which I rub his back and scratch behind his ears and tell him what a good boy he is. I talk to him while Ingrid is getting her backpack ready. He snuggles his little head against my leg and while he wheezes and wiggles I love on him a little bit.

One day as I was taking Ingrid into her school she had on her heavy black coat. As I was brushing off some of Brownie’s hairs I said, “Hang on, sweetie; you have Brownie’s hair on you.” She said, “Oh that’s okay, Poppy. I want some of his love on me today.”

Of course, why not? Leave those reminders of her little loving companion.

Our pets give us so much comfort, don’t they?

There is something known as Animal Assisted Therapy that uses pets as a way of helping people deal with emotional hurts or improve cognitive function. Many nursing centers and assisted living centers use this as a way of bringing joy and often tangible help to aging patients and residents who are struggling with illness and dementia.

It is a way of brightening people’s lives and letting them feel again. Sometimes, when nothing else works, a cuddly puppy or kitten can bring life back to the elderly or the sick or people frozen in mental diseases.

When we are feeling blue our pets can often bring us comfort. They don’t probe us for details or try to fix our unhappiness. They just sit in our lap or beside us and share their presence as gifts of grace and welcome and acceptance. Often their eyes tell us. They communicate something that says they like being with us; don’t leave, stay with me. There is so much joy and goodness in that. And sometimes a little healing, too.

Novelist Milan Kundera once wrote, “Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring—it was peace.”

Yes. How nice to be in Eden again. I feel that in Brownie’s company and love.

© 2012 Timothy Moody

Comments

  1. There is no greater peace than that kind of unconditional love.

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