When I was young, I was convinced I’d spend my life working at fashion magazines.
And for a while, I did.
But unfortunately, in all my youthful dreams, I’d never really planned for life after a certain age. When you’re young and naive, even 30 sounds ancient—so far off in the future that it doesn’t occur to you to prepare for how time will change things.
By my late twenties, I started wondering what happened to fashion editors after a certain age. Were they relocated to a farm somewhere with retired supermodels and last season’s handbags? Were they quietly put out to pasture at House & Home magazine?
What never occurred to me was that I’d leave on my own.
If you had told me then that I’d spend my forties living in St. Andrews, two blocks from my parents, with a husband, a dog, and a career devoted to small-town journalism, I would have assumed something had gone catastrophically wrong.
Instead, it turned out to be exactly right.
A surprising amount of that happiness comes in the form of a 65-pound dog named Maud.
When Patrick and I got her, we’d been together just under two years. Neither of us said it outright, but bringing home a puppy felt like a major life decision. We were choosing each other. We were becoming a family.
At first, Maud was all puppy—chaotic, curious, and determined to put everything she found into her mouth. We watched her discover the world: her first beach, her first snowfall, her first Thanksgiving turkey.
Somewhere along the way, she stopped being a puppy and became something more.
We had hoped we might have children, but life had other plans. There was no way to explain any of that to Maud. Yet somehow, she seemed to understand her role.
She became our child, our sidekick, our constant companion.
Mostly, she became the glue.
She has never accepted the possibility that she might occasionally stay home while we go somewhere else. If Patrick picks up his keys, she’s ready. If I put on shoes, she’s at the door. The idea that we would leave without her seems, in her mind, both irrational and personally insulting.
We are a family, after all.
And she made us one.
Maud turned seven at the end of December. I turned forty-seven in May.
Using dog math, she’s now older than I am.
This realization arrived with roughly the same level of horror as discovering I now sometimes make involuntary noises when standing up.
Neither of us is old exactly.
But we’re no longer young.
Some nights she sleeps between Patrick and me, stretched out like a small human. Her head rests on my pillow. I hear her gentle snore and sometimes kiss the back of her head while trying to memorize the feeling.
Not because anything is wrong.
Just because I know.
The cruel bargain of loving a dog is that they teach you how precious time is while having so much less of it than we do.
You know this when you get a puppy. But you don’t really feel it until that puppy becomes part of you.
That’s when the clock starts to hurt.
These days, I find myself paying more attention to ordinary moments. The way she races across the beach. The way she insists every visitor participate in a “Maud hug”—a prolonged embrace involving both front paws and absolutely no respect for personal space. The way she watches chipmunks from the window with the seriousness of a wildlife researcher whose funding depends on the outcome.
We’ve spent so much time together that it’s hard to tell where one of us ends and the other begins.
She has made me more patient, more present, more appreciative of nature. I’m fairly certain she’s inherited my need for attention and affection. We have influenced each other in all the ways families do.
Over the years, we’ve learned to communicate without words.
She knows when I’m sad.
I know when she’s worried.
She trusts me completely.
And I trust her too.
The only difference is that I know how the story ends.
One day, I will have to say goodbye. And somehow, I signed up for all this anyway.
I’ve always known I will eventually lose her. What I didn’t know was how much I would love her.
And even knowing that now—knowing how much she means to me—I would choose it again. Every single time.
Humans say it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, as if trying to comfort those whose hearts have been broken. As if to say, yes, it’s worth the gamble.
But with a dog, there is no gamble.
You will be loved.
And you will lose.
Dogs seem to understand something the rest of us spend our lives trying to learn. They don’t hesitate. They don’t protect themselves. They don’t calculate whether love is worth the risk.
They simply love.
Completely. Recklessly. Without reservation.
Maybe that’s why they don’t stay as long as we do.
They arrive already knowing the answer.
One day, Maud will be gone. But she will still be here in all the ways that matter. On every beach walk. In every chipmunk sighting. In every moment I choose joy over worry, presence over distraction, and love over self-protection.
The great irony is that dogs leave us far too soon, yet somehow stay with us forever.
I signed up for a dog knowing she would eventually break my heart.
What I didn’t know was that she would show me how to love.
