How I Learned to Love My Dog By Observing His Behavior

He and I had just gone for a walk in the park near my apartment, our second of the day. In the park, old people sat around tables playing mahjong, and children swarmed the playgrounds. Forty-five minutes later, when we got home, I sat down on the couch, my shoes still on.

Freddie jumped up beside me and stood to put two feet on my shoulder, tail wagging, watching. He yawned, producing a breath cloud of warm stink. We’d been together all weekend, usually no more than three feet apart.

I didn’t know what he wanted. I felt the weight of his expectancy in the air. I gave him one of his chewy treats, and he was occupied with that for a few minutes.

Then he was back, wet nose on my cheek. It was only one PM, and I’d reached the end of what I knew to do with him: walk him, make sure he eliminated, feed him, let him do the one play activity he’d shown he could do. How did dogs spend their time?

Normally, by this time on a Sunday, I would have opened my computer and become absorbed for several hours in something joyless and not very useful, such as opening emails and marking them as unread again. But today there was Freddie, snuffling in my ear and staring at me. I turned and made eye contact with him, and his tail started wagging.

I was accountable, not alone, and I needed to do something more. I realized, almost nothing about him. About how and why he did the things he did, what created or extinguished his responses to the world around him.