On Dogs Are Home

Boys,

When I was young I had a dog for a short amount of time. I had fun with her and I’d like to think she had fun with us for that short time we’d had her. It didn’t work out for whichever reason, I’m sure there was more than one, so we found another home for her and we moved on with our lives.

Her name was Cinders — I don’t know if I ever mentioned her in any of these posts or not. She might have had a family before us, and a family or two after us. But everywhere she went, she made that place a home.

Your mom had dogs her whole life. I think there was always a dog in the house, because she’s told me about all the names that had past through her home. Some of them might have had the same name and some of them might have been used to replace the one before like they do in comedy shows, and when your kids call you out on it you kind of, well, have to say “yea Nick got hit by a car. So we called this one Nick. So twenty years from now, we’ll refer to him as Nick 2 and will talk it off like this was normal childhood and people just, kind of… accept it.

All that to say, “Dogs are Love” and that’s true, but dogs are also home. Dogs make it a crazy home when they’re puppies and are peeing all over the place and eating all the things. Dogs make homes love when those dogs are old and they have a hard time getting around and you think about how many things they’ve gone through with you and seen in your life. Dogs help you grow up, and eventually, make and maintain a home.

Dogs are the energy that makes it OK for things to be messy sometimes. Home are messy. They’re allowed to be messy and to be lived in. Dogs are chaos, especially puppies, but they make these ordinary moments interesting with wondering, “what is she chewing?” or “is she peeing right now?!?” Your mom woke up the other night in a half-panic and swore she heard Oakley pee in the bathroom.

I was like, “Babe, I checked and there’s no pee in here.”

“Ryan (ugh), I heard it… Was it in the shower?

“No. Babe I’m not saying you didn’t hear anything, but I’m just saying there’s only so many places to check in our master bathroom and I’ve all but run out of places that I haven’t checked yet.”

The point isn’t that your mom has an active imagination when she comes out of sleep sometimes, rather that we are thinking about that dog all the time — day and night.

The point is…

You can have a home without a dog in it. It’s not for our family but I was a part of a home without a dog for a very long time, and that was a wonderful home. But as long as there’s love, and you invite a dog into your home, 100% of the time it will be a home for as long as you have that dog. It will be crazy, and chaotic, and frustrating, and the most fun always, and oftentimes all of those things at once.

The moments and the memories are greater than the frustration of cleaning up a mess sometimes, and those moments and memories are greater than the pain you feel when you lose a really, really good one.

Maybe all dogs are good ones when there’s love. Maybe every dog is born with a chance, and with love and sometimes a little bit of luck, they will be good and find their forever home. But each stop along that dog’s journey, he or she made that place they moved into a home.

Home’s don’t have to have dogs. But when a house has a dog + love, it’s no longer just a house; it’s home. Dogs are home.

Dad