On the role our dogs play in knitting together the everyday moments of our lives
Pablo moved from England to America with us last summer, and his presence turned an unfamiliar house in a foreign country into a home
My favrourite time to write is early in the morning, before the kids get up, and the house is all quiet. 5am is my ideal time to start, but more often it’s an hour later, at 6am. I love that sense of silent anticipation of the day that’s about to happen. I can get more done in an hour now than I can in three hours early afternoon. I like sitting on the sofa beside the kitchen table, with a pot of tea that’s only for me, as I hear the plastic clatter of my hands racing across the keyboard. I am alone, and yet I am not, either, because my companion in these early morning hours is always Pablo.
But Pablo isn’t here this morning, as I write this, but is instead with a dog sitter in Washington, where he’s staying while we’re away right out in big country, at the edge of Yellowstone, staying in Montana and Wyoming for the next couple of weeks. I’m writing this at dawn in Wyoming, typing away quietly so that the kids keep sleeping, and give me the next couple of hours to work. Pablo couldn’t come with us but I think he would like that to be here too. I know I’d certainly love to see him in this unfamiliar landscape, sniffing the air and possibly picking up the unfamiliar scent of elk or bear. I miss him as my early morning writing companion too, lying beside me on the sofa, sometimes wagging his tail even when I just glanced down at him.
He is “just” a dog, I know, and yet he’s also a very real being whose part of our lives, a companion to all of us, but especially Dash, who genuinely loves him like a brother. Pablo calms Dash when he’s frantic, and distracts him when he’s enraged by some minute domestic injustice (a tiny piece of Lego the size of a staple that he left on the kitchen table having been lost, for example.) Pablo, more than anything, is part of what makes this house in Washington DC where we are living for the moment, like home.
Pablo is loyal and sweet, the most affectionate and attentive, although rarely needy, too. In some ways he’s THE perfect companion and I have a theory about dogs, and life, and the relationship between everyday, where life happens, and the dogs who accompany us through those days.