A Dog Didn’t Change My Life. She Brought Me Back Into It

Dublin, Ireland

I never thought getting a dog would change the way I lived quite so much. It wasn’t really about the walks, the food, the fur all over the flat, or having to organise the day around another living creature. I knew all of that came with having a dog. What I hadn’t expected was how quietly she would pull me out of my own head and back into the world around me.

Before she came along, I could walk through half of Dublin without properly noticing where I was. I’d be thinking about work, conversations I’d already had, things I should have said differently, plans for the following week, problems that hadn’t even happened yet. My body might have been walking down the street, but my mind was nearly always somewhere else.

Then the walks began.

At first, they were simply part of the routine. She needed to go out, so out we went. But dogs don’t understand the idea of getting somewhere quickly. She could spend several minutes investigating one tree as though it contained the answer to every important question in the world. She’d stop at a patch of grass, watch a bird, change direction for no obvious reason or become completely fascinated by a puddle.

In the beginning, I found myself standing there impatiently, thinking about everything else I could be doing. After a while, I stopped checking the time.

I started looking around instead.

I noticed the light on the buildings in the evening. I noticed how different the air smelled after rain.