If They Could Choose Gifts...

They would ask for your time. Your time every day, at least once a day, just one on one. Time together, where you get to play, and walk, and enjoy each other's company. Time to look into each other's eyes. Time to connect and be friends.  Time to be really part of each other's emotional lives, not just furniture in each other's landscape.

They would ask for your attention. Your attention uninterrupted by the TV or cell phones ringing, or tweets, or texts, or emails. Your attention on them, not on what you need to do at work tomorrow or what you didn't get done today, or on the laundry waiting upstairs.

They would ask for your patience. Your patience when they are not as human as you'd like them to be at a given moment, and they don't do exactly know what you'd like them to do. Maybe they bark too much just as you are trying to hear something important on the phone. Or they have an accident on the porch during a huge rainstorm. Or maybe one day when you are gone for 14 hours, they eat a sock. Can you understand?

They would ask for your friendship. Your willingness to have fun and share with them is one of the most rewarding things you can give to the both of you. Be open and willing to enter into a reciprocal relationship.

They would ask for your protection. Don't let anyone pick on them, or tease them.  Don't let humans or other animals bully them. Don't let anything in their home environment cause them harm, or be a potential danger. Watch out for silly things like little plastic toy parts and rubber bands and scissors too close to the edge of a counter.  

They would ask for your loyalty. Don't leave them, ever. Stay with them for exams, stay by them bloodwork even if you hate needles. If the time comes, you hold their head and paw until they are gone. Never ever abandon them, never make them find their way without you. Never allow them to be afraid and alone.  

Ever. Ever.

-woof