Meet My Dog, Ted

by Ken Whitman, Publisher

There’s something special about dogs. If you’re a cat person, I get that too. Nothing like a cat climbing up on you, making itself comfortable and falling asleep purring on your chest. But this is about dogs. Specifically, it’s a salute to my dog Ted.  

Unless they’ve been around humans too much, dogs aren’t very dysfunctional. They are specialists in unconditional love. In fact, I’m coming to think that dogs exist to counterbalance the stress and negativity that all too frequently typify the daily world of people.

Ted is always ready to participate. Are you awake? Time for some morning petting? (Yes, he sleeps at the foot of the bed.) Time to go out? Great! Food ready? Great! Post-food play time? Great! In fact, it’s hard to find anything that Ted isn’t enthusiastic about. But Ted isn’t hyper—he’s just happy about life.

I love my Australian shepherd, but he makes it easy. He loves me, my wife, his “brother” (another Aussie, named Buddy), and he loves other animals and people. He brings a joyful energy that is unmistakable and brightens each day.

Lennon and McCartney wrote, “All you need is love,” and I think Ted is living proof. He sends love out into the world and it comes back to him.

It’s easy to write it off by saying, “What does he have to worry about? He doesn’t have to earn a living.” That’s true, but perhaps in discounting our animal friends, we lose sight of the fact that they might be valuable teachers. They don’t judge us. Their hearts are open. They’re happy to go out and happy to come in. They don’t dwell on the past or worry about the future. They’re lifelong friends.

We’re pretty evolved as humans, but has the world we’ve created made us happy? Ted sees the world without the mental matrix we impose on it. He is like a perpetual puppy, whereas we seem to lose our childlike qualities somewhere along the way. Perhaps Ted and his kind are here as reminders that while love may not be all you need in this world, it might have us wagging our virtual tails a lot more.

I’d be interested to know how you feel about your favorite pet.