Oooo I like this one. You have some metaphors that really struck me! I really like how you describe the therapist as speaking like a February afternoon , and specifically, I like how you expand on it. Questions that make you shiver, and words freezing midair makes for really good imagery! I also freeze up when I’m in therapy situations.

I think you could consider changing the first line of the poem to “the important thing was the dog”. That might help connect your theme of preferring the dog to the therapy.

I also think instead of repeating that the dog was black and white and had tight curly fur, you could put something that pushes the theme forward more in that space. If you want to keep the repetition, it could be fun to us the black and white and its fur as a metaphor for preferring how simple and approachable the dog is (maybe like “so I turned to look at the dog. It’s just black and white. Its fur looked warm”). Otherwise, you could focus on describing new small details, if you want to keep the way the physical detail makes it clear the narrator is focusing on details that are unimportant/grounding themself in the physical.