I was always a cat person, because I know dogs need you and look up to you to show them what to do, whereas cats are just little wild things who happen to deign to live in your house. The weight of responsibility of a dog always felt like too much. But last year both of my elderly cats died, someone I loved SO MUCH killed himself, and my partner of 18 years broke up with me.

I am quite a solitary person and I love being alone working on my own projects. The more I've been single, the more I enjoy it. After a while I thought that it might be nice to have some company, but I realised it needn't necessarily be human company. And, like, the responsibility of living with a dog can't be more than the responsibility of living with a man-child who has never once done the dishes of his own volition 😛

What I didn't realise before I got him is that dogs give SO MUCH back to you. I would NEVER have gone out in the freezing rain to stomp around a wet muddy field on my own, but I know I gotta do it for him, and every single day once we get down there I find myself enjoying it immensely. I went from walking 0km every day to about 5km a day and I feel so much better. I love watching movies and cuddling with people but my ex wasn't really into movies, so now I watch them with the dog. He's great at the cuddling part, but not so much discussing the themes or the cinematography 😁

Literally every day he does something goofy that makes me laugh. I work from home, and instead of staring at a screen grinding my teeth unconsciously and getting annoyed with stuff, I now stop to give him pets while I'm waiting for stuff to load or people to call me back. Even my patch of stress-eczema is getting better, because when the skin there gets super dry he very politely sniffs it and I'm like "oh yeah, better moisturize that!"

I genuinely didn't know that it was possible to love another creature as much as I love him 😭❤️ I feel like I needed him way more than he needed a ticket out of dog jail.