dogs

The Wisdom

Mindset

That Comes from Loving Puppies

Last Christmas, my daughter Thalia gave me a journal. Her request was simple: she asked me to write down my reflections and whatever “wisdom” I’ve gathered over the years. I plan to give it back to her this coming December, filled with the thoughts I hope will serve her well.

As I’ve sat with this journal, my mind hasn’t gone to business strategies or grand philosophies. Instead, it has drifted back to the floor of our home, reflecting on a younger Thalia and her “zoo.”

I see her pouring an overwhelming volume of love into Blu, JoJo, Bruiser, Rusty, Pippa, and Maui. I see the tea parties, the prams, and Happy the rabbit. I see her reading stories to them as if they held the secrets of the universe, or crawling into a massive dog bed just to be near a sleeping friend.

Watching her, I realised she was practising a type of love that is entirely innocent. It is a love that lacks that “adult voice”—the one that keeps score, judges, and tries to tear things down. When a puppy had an accident on the rug or chewed a favourite shoe, Thalia didn’t withdraw. She didn’t label the dog a failure. She saw the mess as a natural part of a beautiful, growing life. She offered a warm hug and kept right on going.

The Lessons of Scarlet

Writing these notes for Thalia has helped me remember how to love myself, too. It took me back to my first puppy, Scarlet– he was an Irish Setter who became my best friend.

Scarlet was far from “perfect.” I remember the joy of his antics—the way he’d stand up like a person to open the back door, or how he’d sneakily lick the cream off my mum’s cakes while they were cooling on the counter. I remember him lying by the fire, farting so badly that we all had to evacuate the room.

Yet, every one of those moments was filled with love. We didn’t demand he be a different dog; we loved him for the stolen cream and the chaos. He taught me that you don’t have to be “well-behaved” to be worthy of a place by the fire.

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Look With Better Eyes……

Friendship, Peace, Symbology

I have lots of voice memos that I plan to do something with, and then I do nothing with them. But this is one I am actually using. I am recording it on my morning walk with Maui. It follows my first night sleeping in my new house here in Nardò.

Right now, it’s just my dog and me on our morning walk.

He is my companion. There are lots of things I could say about him, mostly that he’s a big lump. It’s silly, really. He knocks things over because he doesn’t seem to have any awareness of his own size. He sheds far too much hair. I spend minutes every day—actual minutes of my life—just vacuuming up after him.

It pisses me off. And yet, withal, here we are. Never mind the shedding. We are Walking.

And what does he do? He just lives. Give me a car, give me a tree, give me somewhere to pee, and I’m happy. That’s his philosophy. He loves the walk. He gets out of the house, and he just finds every smell compelling. He keeps walking and walking. And now we’re here, basically, in a field between a vineyard and an olive grove. And he’s eating grass. I read somewhere that dogs eat grass, and they can’t really do anything with it. They don’t digest it well. But apparently—I don’t know—it seems to help them. Maybe we could research that later. Is there a thing about dogs and grass? Who knows.

Anyway, the point is: here is the dog. The dog’s life is just getting up in the morning and getting some water. Suffering the heat or the cold—and it feels cold now that we have acclimatised to those hot summer temperatures. Going for a walk. He is never trying to control a damn thing. No strategising. He just takes it moment by moment. Day by day. His happiness is all included in those moments. He’s not lying around worrying about what tomorrow brings or what he did a minute ago.

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