Creatures of Connection

The divine connection between humans and their dogs.

One evening, after arguing with one of my teens, I started making dinner. Needless to say, I was in a bad mood as I pulled the food out of the fridge. At this opportune moment, Rocky started barking from the living room (not a typical occurrence) and wouldn’t stop. His barking irritated me further.

I peered over at him from the kitchen to see what was up. When he saw me look at him, he stopped barking and just stared at me, wagging his tail. Grumpy and uncertain as to why he was being so vocal, I went back to prepping dinner, hoping it would stop.

It did not.

Barking again. Bark! Bark! Bark! Loud, short barks. It kept on going. And going. Do I really have to deal with this now?, I thought to myself as I reluctantly surrendered to the fact that I would have to put some effort into making this stop. I glanced over at him again. Right on cue, he stopped barking. He looked very alert. Perky, even. Was he…smiling? Why did he look so cheerful? Was he completely unaware of how much he was annoying me?

At this point, even through the filter of my bad mood, I couldn’t help but noticed how—yes—happy he seemed. Once this fully registered, I could appreciate how cute he looked; how sparkly his eyes were, how chipper and playful his body language was. Then it finally hit me: he just wanted me to play with him. The living room is where we usually play together with his toy. My heart suddenly opened.

As I walked toward him and tossed him his toy, my heavy mood began falling away. We played tug-of-war and fetch with his toy. As he ran and bounced happily around, jumping on and off the couch, his tail wagged heartily and his eyes gleamed earnestly as he kept trying to sneak kisses onto my face. Eventually we ended up playfully cuddling on the couch before I went back to making dinner.

Like always, he’d made me laugh and smile. Our connection had gone well beyond words and mere companionship. He’d taken me out of negativity and led me toward joy—shared joy. He’d given me exactly what I’d needed in that moment even though I hadn’t known I’d needed it myself. He really is like my personal little angel on Earth.

Anyone who doesn’t think dogs are in tune with a higher power should really think again.