6 habits I learned from my dog
Making my bed, going out more, and living in the moment (lifetothemax #37)
I started writing this newsletter last Monday. I had planned to write about all the habits I picked up after Charlotte and I adopted our dog Adobo a few months ago. After all, a frequent topic of my newsletter is habits, specifically how I’ve eliminated bad ones (e.g., too much time on my phone) and systematically implemented positive ones (e.g., reading every day or working out consistently). Since having a dog, though, a lot of my daily routine has changed in ways that weren’t by design but by necessity, and I thought it would make for an exciting newsletter topic.
Little did I know that in the middle of writing this newsletter, Adobo would fall pretty ill.
On Wednesday, she woke up earlier than us, which is very out of the ordinary. She’ll usually sleep in on weekends, even as late as 11 A.M., so we knew something was up. She seemed pretty lethargic all day, and she wasn’t touching her food. Since she usually picks up absolutely everything she can put her paws on while we’re out on walks, this was also very strange. Later that day, after Charlotte had gone to work, I decided to bring her out to the dog park. Maybe if she gets some fresh air and exercise, I thought, she’ll finally work up an appetite and come home to eat her breakfast.
However, when we arrived at the dog park, things immediately took a turn for the worst. I’ll spare you the details, but after she “did her business,” I noticed a considerable and quite worrying amount of blood. Not good.
We hurriedly left the park (after I cleaned up “her business,” of course), and I started calling local vets while we speed-walked home. All vets in NYC work by appointment only, and they are usually booked out at least a week in advance. One vet gave me the number for an emergency veterinary service, and after picking up Adobo’s carrier and a toy from home, I rushed straight there.
Luckily, Adobo is feeling all better now. The vets ran a whole bunch of tests and x-rayed her multiple times. She was pretty dehydrated, and the vet told us it would be best for her to spend the night there on an IV so they could monitor her. After a second round of x-rays, the vet on the night shift gave us a call around 1 A.M. to tell us that she was better and that she should be ready to go home in the morning.
This was quite a stressful situation, which would have been exacerbated by the cost of all the tests and treatments if not for the insurance we signed up for as soon as we got Adobo. If you have a dog, I cannot recommend doing this enough. As much as it may feel expensive when your dog is fine, things can all too easily go awry in a matter of hours. Luckily, because we had insurance, we didn’t have to worry about treatment costs and were even able to opt for the safer but more expensive option of treatment when faced with the decision. I hope this never happens to you, but in case it does, get insurance!
But anyway, this newsletter is not about insurance, nor is it about my dog getting sick. Instead, it is about what I have learned since having a dog and the habits I’ve picked up.
I first thought of this topic during a recent conversation with Charlotte. I brought up how I sometimes feel overwhelmed with work and balancing everything that I want to get done in the limited time I have. I often seem to be stressed about time: not having enough of it to finish something, not having enough of it in a day, life being too short to accomplish all that I want to accomplish, etc. In the past, I’ve even had somewhat unhealthy relationships with time, where I’ve wanted to even extend my days by sleeping less, using alternative sleep schedules like the ones pictured below (do not try this at home). All this to say that time is a relatively significant stressor in my life.
At some point in the conversation, Charlotte asked me if having a dog added to this stress. Walking, feeding, and taking care of our dog takes up a lot of our day, so Charlotte wondered if that time spent on the dog could also be an added stressor. I hadn’t thought about it that way, so this got me thinking. In a way, having a dog is a significant time commitment. Every morning when the dog wakes up and every evening before bed, I take her out. Once a day, we will also take her out for a long walk to the dog park, which lasts another hour. So yes, the dog, in a way, adds time pressure.
However, the more I thought about it, all I could see were the positives.
As much as it is a time commitment, having a dog has so many positives that it is hard even to see the negatives. Of course, it is hard at times. When we had just gotten Adobo and I brought her home for Christmas, for example, she was not the biggest fan of large groups being in her home or other family dogs. However, Adobo has gotten better and better every day, and she has so much love and energy that she lightens and livens every day of our lives.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized how I had changed my habits since having Adobo, and very much for the better. And so I wanted to write about these habits.
So here we go; the following is a list of the habits that my dog Adobo has taught me!
Going outside multiple times a day. The first thing that changes after getting a dog is that you are forced to go out multiple times a day. Whether rain or sunshine, thunder or snowstorm, Adobo and I will be out at least three times a day. I also take care of her first and last walks of the day, which means I start and end each day by getting some fresh air. In the past, I would quite often spend whole days at home. Work-from-home exacerbated this. Even after a productive day inside, when the evening would come around, and I realized I had not been out all day, it felt like I had wasted the day. I’m happy to say this no longer happens.
Going for at least one long walk a day. At least once a day, we bring out our dog for a long walk around the neighborhood or to the dog park. This means we are getting to know the area, interacting with other people (specifically other dog owners or fans of Adobo), and simply existing outside. As the weather has started to get warmer, we’ve also started spending time in the outside seating areas of restaurants and cafes (“en terrasse”) with Adobo, which is such an excellent way to spend time outside while also feeling like you are doing something “useful” by bringing the dog out.
Having an imposed routine. I’m a big proponent of having a powerful daily routine and habits to get the most out of every day (I even started a newsletter to help me maintain these habits, so that’ll tell you…). Having a dog forces you to have a productive and healthy routine that doesn’t feel like a chore. Walking Adobo first thing in the morning and night means I can’t stay in bed all morning (or I risk being punished with poop on the rug) and can’t just fall asleep on the couch in the evening in front of a movie. In the past, I might have worked on something late into the evening or watched “just one more episode.” With a dog, you know you have to take her out before you can sleep, so doing that earlier is always nicer. Feeding Adobo at the same time every day also forces me to think about how and when I am feeding myself at regular intervals. In general, I have a stricter regimen for my life, which means I can make the best of every day.
Making the bed. I had never really subscribed to the whole “making you bed” schtick in the past. “It’s a great way to kickstart the day with an easy achievement, and it can lead to building more discipline in general in your everyday life.” Although this sounds like it fits right in with my newsletter and previous habits I’ve implemented, it just wasn’t something I would do every day.
Now that we have a dog who tracks in quite a bit of dirt from the city streets, things are different. We wipe her paws whenever we come in from a walk, but she also loves rolling in who-knows-what at the dog park, and it’s probably not the kind of thing you want on the white sheets you spend eight hours a day in. So now, (almost) every day, I make the bed. That way, she sleeps on it, not in it. It’s a slight difference, but it’s led to me building a habit that I’m sure my Mom would be happy to hear I’ve finally picked up.
Keeping a tidier living space. Dogs are fun, but they’re also messy. And they don’t pick up after themselves. (So rude, right?) Adobo is quite spoiled and has about 15 toys, which end up all around the apartment if we don’t tidy up often. Some of her harder chew toys are particularly nice to step on in the dark.
We also have to keep a tidy living space for when we leave the house. She tends to find and chew up anything we leave lying around, which means we can’t leave anything lying around. For both of these reasons, we tidy up the house way more often than we previously did. (This doesn’t mean the house is cleaner. As much as we tidy up, Adobo un-tidies up. It’s a constant battle, and both parties are determined to win.)
Being more flexible about time. This seems contrary to the earlier point of “having an imposed routine,” but let me explain. This habit may be the one I value the most.
When you have a dog (and this is even more true of having a child, not that I have personal experience with this), you lose control over your own time. As I mentioned previously, you can maintain some control by having a routine, but even with this, sometimes things get in the way. Adobo getting sick this week is the perfect example of this. I was following the same routine as every day when things veered off track suddenly. I had not planned on spending my late afternoon and evening at an emergency veterinary clinic, but it’s what I had to do.
As someone who feels stressed about time because I have lots I want to be doing in life, losing control of your time like I did last Wednesday reminds you that the things you are stressed about don’t matter. On the day Adobo got sick, I didn’t finish my reading for the day, but who cares? Instead, I took care of my dog’s health, and now she is healthy. In a way, I can also apply this thinking to other parts of my life. If I stay at the dog park an extra thirty minutes one day and have to push back writing my newsletter or reading to the next day, what is the worst that could happen?
Having a dog forces you to be flexible with your time and live more in the moment. After all, being stressed about writing a newsletter on a Sunday when I can spend the day outside with my dog seems quite stupid. In this way, my dog has taught me to take a break and smell the flowers.
Pretty good lessons from an animal who occasionally chases her own tail, huh? The benefits of having a dog so vastly outweigh the feeling of not having enough time in a day that it’s not even comparable. The unconditional love and loyalty you get from the animal are quite beautiful, and as much as Charlotte and I train Adobo, she’s also taught us so much already.
Thanks for reading my newsletter! If you have a furry friend in your life, please send me photos.
I’ll see you all next time. Bye! ❤️
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