The Dog at the Door and What She Knows

I opened the door to my house. It could have been any other day and I wouldn’t have batted an eye. My job was uneventful, I went through the same boring and slow traffic, and I stopped for milk but again, I missed grabbing bread. It was just another day.

But then, there was Maple.

She wasn’t jumping up and down or barking like the psycho dogs. This sweet girl was just a ball of excitement, with a body bent like a pretzel and a tail that was wagging probably more than the entire world puts together. Her front paws were doing that weird tap dance (I like to imagine that she is trying to hold back the excitement, but it is too big for her), and her eyes locked onto mine like she was trying to concentrate on the hardest math problem.

I had ditched the divide and conquer spreadsheet routine, the microwave meal, and the potential meeting distraction of uttering the words ‘sounds good.’ I had been completely ordinary for every single hour I had been gone.

But none of that mattered because I was home. To her, that was everything.

When dogs come greet you at the door, you feel a sense of child like joy that you may have not experienced in a long time. The greatest part is that you don’t have to do anything on the interesting or helpful, or productive side. You just have to come home as yourself.

I think about this when I feel like I’m walking the tightrope. When I think back at a conversation I feel I went too far and said too much. When I feel guilty for a missed deadline. When I feel the shame of forgetting to reply to a text. I remember the playful dog behind the door who has no expectations. Just treats. Maple’s tail wags and ears perk for a full 30 seconds and she immediately shifts to other priorities. Dinner, a bark, and the milk that I’m still ignoring. It isn’t long. But it performs a small reset, like a breath of fresh air outside.

I could feel my body in the thirty seconds it took to feel my shoulders drop. My heart slowed. I squatted, with the dog now nudging my knee. She welcomes you into the moment. She doesn’t care what you have to do next and she doesn’t care about that. What you should have done three hours ago.

All of this is how it should work, but you need to remember that this is the exception, not the rule. Most of the world relates to you based on what you produce or provide. Your job needs you to perform. Your family needs you to remember things. Even friendships, good ones, ask for some level of reciprocity and effort. All of that is fine. It’s how people work.

We all know the frustration of trying to explain a dog’s behavior to others, who just don’t seem to get it, but when she sees me, she looks at me like she’d never want to be anywhere else. She doesn’t love you more when you’re charming or more efficient, or love you less when you’re tired and distracted, and just don’t have it together. She loves you because you went back out the front and came in again. That’s the story, and there isn’t a more complex narrative.\n\nAs a disclaimer, I don’t want to sound too cheesy here, but Maple isn’t really offering me a way out of my problems or teaching me some profound lesson about existence. She’s just a dog. Doing dog things.\n\nBut here’s the thing. After days when I wonder if I’ve done anything that really mattered at all, when the hours just seem to blur together and I have no clue what I even accomplished, I come home. I see Maple and she reminds me that one creature in the world is genuinely and completely glad that I exist. \n\nSome days, just having that is enough.