What does a Toby do?

A reprise on unconditional love and rescue dogs

What now does a Toby do?

• He slaps you for not petting him sufficiently. He measures sufficiency in time and attention.
• He jumps into bed with you and curles up at your side.
• He reserves the right to jump off if your foot so much as twitches. Or not.
• He walks around the flowers in your garden.
• He stops chasing bunnies if you ask him.
• He loves it when I get home.
• He feuds with other dogs.
• We forget to close the gate because he won’t leave the yard without his parents.
• He shows me how to enjoy the quiet moments with family.

Do dogs have their seasons or do we have seasons and in so having them project it onto our dogs? My last post about Toby is true and accurate as I wrote it. It also isn’t accurate today. He doesn’t howl very much, and the whole found-family versus expectations motif just doesn’t land for me anymore. He’s the dog I want to and ought to choose. Nitpicking would be like finding yourself perturbed that the sky was blue today. Maybe having a dog is like lapping. You’re rough, the dog is rough, you grind the two together for a few years until everything is smooth and you can’t really tell that the two parts weren’t always a perfect fit. Toby loves me more purely than I think I’ve ever experienced, and I hope on a good day I can reflect a tenth of that back to him.