#dogs are great

[funbearer]

[darkphoenix180]

Again, I want to apologize if your favorite animal isn't in this poll. I put the first twelve animals I thought of. I put generalizations of the ones I could.

[trashboatprince]

This is Maisie, my dad's half blind doggy who he lovingly calls Princess Pretty Puppy. 🤍

She was being cute today and I wanted to share some pictures I took earlier with you guys!

[fantasylandbitch]

The doges

The Golden Retriever is Starbuck and she's my older sister and her wife's dog. The Red Dog who we found out from Embark is an Australian Cattle Dog, Labrador Retriever, and Rot Wiler mix is Aubrey my best friend and therapy dog.

We also found out that Aubrey has a sister named Roxi!

I also consider them blackmailing photos of the dogs if they happen to turn to the dark side.

@vaniloqu3nce @lionydoorin @caitlynsdog

[gloryfore]

My dog loves it when I invade her personal space, in fact I could not possibly invade her personal space enough. She always wants more personal space invadingness.

[youcanneverhavetoomanyangels]

‘Oh great, you’re in lurve, how gross for everyone’.

Pops, The Secret Life of Pets 2016.

[dogs-friendship]

[quodekash]

Dogs are so much easier to understand than humans, like,

They’re predictable.

They have very solidified personalities that rarely waver. For example if you have an energetic dog then your dog is almost always energetic. If you have a shy dog, your dog will probably be shy all the time. It’s not like with humans where it sways and wavers and changes depending on the day. And I’m not saying dogs aren’t complex, they still have feelings and days where they stray from the normal, it’s just more solidified than it is with humans which means you can generally detect when they’re not okay

Adding on to that, dogs are better at communication than humans are. If they want a belly rub, they’ll lie on their back and expose their belly to you. But if you rub their belly in a particular place they don’t want you to, they’ll kinda move their front leg in a way that indicates: move your hand. Sometimes it’s like a swipe, trying to get you to move your hand. And they have particular ways of whining or barking that communicate emotions like loneliness or fear or hunger or anger. And if you try to hug a dog that doesn’t want to be hugged, the dog will do their best to struggle out of it and indicate: don’t hold me like that it feels restraining

Mostly, dogs just want three things in life: food, play, and love. And honestly I relate so much. Three things I hate more than anything are hunger, boredom, and loneliness, which are the opposites of food, play, and love.

Dogs just make so much more sense and are so much better at communicating and are so simple in such complex ways, it’s just easier to understand them than humans. Cos humans can mask their emotions and humans fail at communication all the time (and miscommunication is a huge destroyer of all kinds of relationships), and humans want so many things, and humans aren’t predictable, and humans often don’t properly show when they’re not okay, and humans can act differently around different people and it’s so complicated and confusing and hard to remember about each and every person. But with dogs, there isn’t any of that.

Basically, what I’m trying to get at here, is dogs are great. End of story.

[byelacey]

oh my GOD you can’t just ask someone why they’re barking

now on instagram!

[funbearer]

[istra-ish-sucha-geek]

Emily Bear has absolute SHIT recall. (She believes firmly in her own autonomy.)

So she has forfeited all rights to being off leash.

Particularly in PUBLIC.

Emily Bear is a sweet, sweet girl. Very friendly.

Keeping her on her leash lets ME protect HER from other potentially grompy chompy dogs.

Keep your dogs safe.

Keep them on leash.

Keep them under control.

Don’t be an asshole.

YES YES I NEED THIS SIGN IN EVERY SINGLE PARK PLEASE

This is my daily struggle, I had so many arguments with people with off-leash dogs (in a mandatory leash area!!!). Thanks to this behavior I'm struggling with Kim being anxious/aggressive with other females as she often gets involved in unpleased interactions with free females while on leash. And every single time that I ask for the dog to be at least recalled, I'm being called names and insulted of course.

Also 9 out of 10 their dog isn't really that friendly at all.

[lonepower]

yes i Am paying real money to make you all look at our new dog. we've had her for 3 hours and if anything happened to her I'd kill everyone in this room and then myself. her name is Tater Tot

[possumnest]

you'll notice yourself smiling with delight over things you once paid no attention to -

[dogs-friendship]

[hgeeky]

I like this. I have a few further thoughts on happiness.

I recently read The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson, and while I wouldn't wholeheartedly recommend it, I did like his point about choosing what problems you want. Everything comes with problems. Which problems are good problems for you? I am content with having the problems associated with having a dog - needing to get up at 7 in the morning, not being able to travel spontaneously, etc (and I will tolerate the problem of having a puppy who loves to chew my arm and my shoes). So now I have a dog! And she's part of why I'm happy. Of course, this is a very positive example. In other cases, circumstances are difficult and all the problems are hard, but when worrying about finding happiness, I think it's helpful to remember that no path leads to zero problems.

My other thought is that it's ok if these steps don't lead to happiness for you. You can be doing everything right on the self-care front and still feel awful. I got hit with a massive wave of depression a couple of years ago, more or less out of nowhere. I opted for anti-depressants, and after a few months of finding the right one and the right dose, it's transformed my emotional landscape from despair to joy. My fundamental outlook on life hasn't really changed, but it's easier to find the good in things and tolerate the difficult things, and easier to put effort into things. I now suspect that this depression is a symptom of damage to my brain from my Multiple Sclerosis (diagnosed this year but likely started in 2020 or 2021), rather than something coming from my life. It's possible for physical issues to affect your mood, and I hope you have good medical professionals available to help you explore that if that's what might be happening to you.

i think a lot of people are unhappy because they thing happiness is something that people find or consume rather than something they have to be an active participant in

[blueboyluca]

“When I first heard it, from a dog trainer who knew her behavioral science, it was a stunning moment. I remember where I was standing, what block of Brooklyn’s streets. It was like holding a piece of polished obsidian in the hand, feeling its weight and irreducibility. And its fathomless blackness. Punishment is reinforcing to the punisher. Of course. It fit the science, and it also fit the hidden memories stored in a deeply buried, rusty lockbox inside me. The people who walked down the street arbitrarily compressing their dogs’ tracheas, to which the poor beasts could only submit in uncomprehending misery; the parents who slapped their crying toddlers for the crime of being tired or hungry: These were not aberrantly malevolent villains. They were not doing what they did because they thought it was right, or even because it worked very well. They were simply caught in the same feedback loop in which all behavior is made. Their spasms of delivering small torments relieved their frustration and gave the impression of momentum toward a solution. Most potently, it immediately stopped the behavior. No matter that the effect probably won’t last: the reinforcer—the silence or the cessation of the annoyance—was exquisitely timed. Now. Boy does that feel good.”

— Melissa Holbrook Pierson, The Secret History of Kindness (2015)