A Little Dog’s Adventures in a Big Dog’s World

Suzanne Catalano

I love nothing the way I love my dog.

There are many things in my life that bring me joy. I am passionate about nose work. I love sharing the car hobby with my husband. As a mother who would walk through a burning house to save my children (and sometimes life made it feel that way), my kids are my greatest accomplishment. I adore my grandkids and am truly grateful to be around to watch them grow, especially since my own parents were denied this pleasure with their lives cut way too short. My gratefulness runs deep in the love I have for my extended family. In my heart they form the trunk holding the branches upon which I could climb to the better life. And little did I know my husband, Mike, a keeper of terriers who appreciates my very terrier-like qualities, was God’s answer to my question, “Is there a man out there for me?”

Sitting here in a tiny dining nook in a one room condo at a WorldMark resort while waiting for the completion of the building of our new house, I am getting a lot of writing done. When I am disciplined and dedicate myself to writing, I balance the time equally with reading. The most recent book I read moved me to tears, a memoir written by my publishing coach, Kerk Murray. In his book Pawprints on Our Hearts, Kerk remembers troubling and trying times where his dogs were there to help him through. I had to stop reading when I came across the picture of him and his dog, Lexi. It was their last photo together before Lexi’s passing and it flooded me with emotion as if I were reliving the pain of every dog to whom I’ve said goodbye.

The emotions spilled out in tears rolling down my cheeks, as my husband, sitting at the table next to me on his computer, looked at me in confusion. He was perplexed by what could have possibly made me cry.

“I’m reading a book,” I said it like it was the most normal thing to be crying in front of my computer screen.

“Reading a book?” We began to converse and I told Mike a little about Kerk’s story. Mike explained that he knew many people who simply wouldn’t have dogs after they had loved and lost one. Some folks find the hurt from the loss is just too painful to go through it again. I find it too painful to imagine my life without a dog.

As the conversation with my husband continued, I tried to explain how the story I was reading could bring me to such a state of emotional upset.

“I don’t read those kinds of stories about dogs. I can’t watch the movies where dogs die,” Mike confessed. “It’s just too sad.”

I don’t like being sad when I read or watch the story describing the human-canine bond, but that very bond with its unconditional connection and the devotion it brings us humans to display always evokes a response. Whenever I attempt to describe that love to someone, the words come out wrong. By comparing that love to love for family, children, the love between spouses, it only seems to make things worse as I sound like an insensitive clod of dirt. How can I compare my loved ones to my love of dogs?

Despicably, I guess. Truth be told, there is no comparison. It’s apples and oranges. There is no way to place value on the human-dog relationship to be held against the values of human-human relationships. But apples and oranges are too simple a metaphor to describe the inability to compare love for dogs to love for humans. I write about both relationships with a shared closeness.

Dogs are like the ocean; people are the land. As a human, I automatically relate to everything on land. I love family and can have compassion for all people. Then there’s the ocean where dogs live. This mysterious force of nature, the dogs to which I have been drawn, calls me to cross that line between land and sea. Invited in by nose work, I glimpse the undersea world through the nose of a dog. I want to belong in the dogs’ ocean, to understand their ways, to be privileged with and keeper of their secrets. I want to feel the magnitude of their canine energy like waves crashing on the shore. Let me learn to live symbiotically in the waters of their lives, naturally, with no barriers to separate us like how my dependence on oxygen keeps me from becoming one with the sea. Maybe nose work is like a boat that can bridge the gap for us between land and sea. Dogs are inviting us to come on board this boat and join them in the waters of their world. Why, you ask? Why not.

I get so swept up in the emotions of it all and lose my audience. In this case, Mike. Anyone listening seems bored and a little scared while nodding with remote understanding. I’d lost Mike’s attention, as I attempted to explain why I would want to read a story that made me upset. From his perspective, I appeared to be drowning in waters that could not support me. Who would want to be drowning by choice? But there in the emotions I stayed almost without choice, for a life without dogs would be a worse fate.

In a world where we are reluctant to be vulnerable, we build walls of defense behind which we hide from emotions. If they can’t touch us, they can’t hurt us. Dogs are one thing from which we don’t have to hide. There is no need for a protective wall. We can be ourselves and our dogs will not judge us. They have no expectations, even for their own well-being. They will put us first every time over their own detriment. And then, after they have given it all, they leave us and many folks process this selfishly, like the dog is abandoning them. In their pain and sorrow, they vow to never love a dog again, but why sentence yourself to that?

In explaining nose work, I hope to clear the murky waters and provide a platform for understanding. I would like to appeal to the good nature of folks who feel it is too hard to love and lose. If you’ve loved a dog, you have benefited from all they give. You took what they offer and the only thing you must do is understand they leave way before you are ready to let them go and you owe it to them in the end to not be bitter or pity yourself. The best thing you can do to honor your dogs in the past is to love again the dogs of the future. Don’t stay on the shore when you go into the water. You only deny yourself the joy of complete surrender. Give yourself the gift of love. Choose a dog and live a life of choices that consider your dog’s well-being equal to yours.

I am unashamed to confess there are many interactive situations where I would choose my dog over myself. For example, I will always choose my dog every time over a social function, going to dinner or a movie, a concert. This is no secret to anyone who knows me, but this doesn’t explain my love for dogs, my need for dogs. It is beyond explanation, beyond words. It’s the energy that flows when we lock eyes while playing, the conversation that occurs by simply observing each other, the comforting and healing vibes we exchange during any physical contact. Nose work presents the opportunity to share with my dog all the above methods of connecting. Nose work is playtime, conversation time, and puts us physically together in an impenetrable and undisturbed space where time stands still.

Cheers to all who can see the world through the love of a dog.

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