Two Dogs After Forty Years

For more than forty years, I never had a dog. Then Percy and Pluto entered our lives, and routines I had never considered important suddenly became part of each day.

They do not understand calendars, job titles or unfinished emails. They understand whether you are present. They notice your return, your tone and the small rituals that tell them they belong.

Living with them has made patience less abstract. It has made consistency visible. Trust is built through the same walk, the same bowl, the same return home—ordinary actions repeated until they become certainty.

They changed our house, but more importantly, they changed what I notice inside it.