The hardest thing about sharing your life with a puppy isnt what most people imagine.
It isnt trudging out into the rain, shivering in the biting cold, with eyes still heavy and your heart unsettled. It isnt turning down trips or invitations, hearing, Come, but not with him. It isnt the fur that clings to sheets, to jumpers, even finding a stray strand in your tea. It isnt scrubbing muddy pawprints off the kitchen floor, knowing that, in half an hour, youll do it all again. It isnt the bill from the vet, or the creeping worry you might miss something crucial. It isnt setting aside a corner of freedom, because freedom has become us. And it isnt even that your heart no longer fully belongs to you.
All this is love. All this is living. All this, you chose.
The hardest part arrives quietlylike that ache in your bones when fog from the Downs rolls in. Like London chill that finds its way beneath coat and scarf, nestling deep before you even feel it.
One day, you simply notice: he cant, not quite as he did before. He tries, bless him, but he just cant. He scampers towards you in that familiar way, but somethings missing. His eyes still mirror yours, but now a tired flicker hides behind the bright. Im here, they say, but each day is a bit harder.
You remember who he was once, bounding, wild with youth. And you look at him now, so entirely yours, trusting you beyond reason. He always believed in you: that youd be by his side, that you would help, that you would keep him safe.
And you have.
But now you cant shelter him from age.
What stings most is knowing that, for you, he was comfortbut for him, you were everything: his whole world, his whole sky, the sum of his hope. And you are not ready. Not ready to let him go. Not ready to watch the one who taught you boundless love begin to fade.
Then comes the hush. A silence that presses down. The hollow on the pillow. The bowl that will never again be licked clean. Your heart, in bits.
You walk outside again. But now, it is without him.
You catch yourself whispering into the chilly evening, Come along, dear heart.
If only you could turn back the clock You would choose him all over again. The exhaustion, the ache, the devotionevery bit of it.
Because this love is true.
To have a dog is to set alight a fire in your life.
A fire that will warm you always,
even after it has burned itself into memory.
For a dog has just one calling in this world:
to give you his heart.
