I know, I know! Since the advent of social media, we’ve been swamped with National Days and I’m pretty sure that National Dog Day (or Puppy Day or Rescue Day or I Love My Dog Day) happens several times a year.
And one part of me wants to resist falling for a trend or buying into the hype but another (very determined!) part of me says ‘Why not celebrate good things more often?’
Yes, I know that it is hard to celebrate things – even the very best things- every day.
And if you celebrate things every day, aren’t you just establishing a new normal and nothing is actually being celebrated?
Yeah, probably.
But maybe having multiple points in the year to celebrate important parts of your life is a good compromise between all of those things.
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With all of that wondering (overthinking? probably.) out of the way, I’m going to go ahead and celebrate National Dog Day today.
Even after 6 years, I still find myself somewhat surprised to have a dog.
It’s a good kind of surprise.
It’s delightful to have Khalee in my life, to take her for walks and to give her treats and to just have her company even though part of my brain is still astounded that she lives here.
You see, I have always been allergic to animals and while we had pets some of the time when I was growing up, my allergies kind of forced me to keep my distance.
I don’t think any of us realized that I could take an allergy pill daily. I only took them when my symptoms got really bad – they were a treatment, not a prevention – and as a result, while I loved our dog, Sox, and our guinea pigs and the like I didn’t get the same kind of close to them that other people got to their pets.
So, when my friends started getting pets for their kids – or when it was suggested that I get a pet for mine – I would comment that I couldn’t imagine having an animal living in my house.
Now, before you get all upstrapless about my tone there, I wasn’t judging them and I wasn’t saying dogs were bad. I was actually bewildered by the idea.
I liked dogs and cats but I didn’t understand them. I couldn’t get close to them (because: allergies) and so all I was imagining was having another creature to take care of and my brain just flatly refused to entertain the idea.
But once my ADHD meds were sorted and my kid’s therapist had recommended that we get a ‘tactile’ pet, I had a bit more capacity AND I had an extra reason to take on the responsibility of giving a dog a home.
So, we got a dog, and I started taking allergy meds every day and I quickly began to realize all of the benefits of sharing our house with an animal. In fact, I even wrote a post for National Dog Day in 2019 about how the right dog had come along.
In that post, I mention that I didn’t consider ‘dog person’ as part of my identity. I’m still not sure that it would occur to me to mention how I feel about dogs when having a casual conversation but I am a friend to dogs in a way I never was before and everypup recognizes me as a soft touch for a pat or a snack.
Khalee has branched out a bit since that post – she doesn’t follow every step I take anymore, unless I am in the kitchen or carrying a plate of food, of course.
She gets up waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too early and she sometimes needs to go out over and over and over and that can be annoying in the moment but she also keeps me company when I’m working on something challenging and she gives me a reason to go out for a (often very slow) walk and she’s happy to see me when I come home (even if I have just been out in the driveway) and, well, she’s just great.
And appreciating her for her mere existence – she’s good because she’s good, not because of anything specific she does – has made it a lot easier to feel that way about creatures in general, including people.
So yeah, I’m up for celebrating National Dog Day.
If you are looking for some other ways to celebrate National Dog Day, check out this list on the National Dog Day website.
As a bonus, here are some photos of some of my other dog friends…I mean, my friend’s dogs…hmm, maybe I was right the first time.
And just in case you want to know more about how helpful Khalee is, here are some of my posts that feature her:
Omg such cute doggies. I just love dogs.
Thanks, Chantel! I’m lucky to know so many cute dogs and I’m glad to introduce you to them in this post.
(Unrelated but my middle name is Chantel, spelled the same and everything!)