Dog Love and the Longing for Something Deeper

I love dogs. Truly. I obsess a little over them. But if I’m honest, I’m also a bit chicken shit about the responsibility. So instead of getting one, I linger at a distance—staring at real dogs or scrolling through images online, eyes glazed with longing, like a love-struck fool.

Whenever someone posts about a dog (or even a cat), I almost always stop to read it. The inner story goes: “Hey, they love animals! They must be an extraordinarily kind and warm person.”

Ha! That’s a blind, unexamined belief if I’ve ever heard one.

Yesterday, I fell in love with an image. Couldn’t stop looking at it. A dog—or maybe a wolf—gazing out with an otherworldly beauty. I asked myself, If that very animal attacked me, would I still love the image? If both dogs in the picture grew old, diseased, lost their lustrous coats and majestic coloring—would my affection fade?

If I went blind, lost my hearing, a leg, or every last cent to my name… would I still want to care for these creatures? Be near them? Is my attachment to dogs contingent on a perfect set of circumstances?

Do I actually love dogs—or just what they symbolize? Comfort. Devotion. Unconditional presence. Friendship. Do I want the dog—or the deeper meaning I’ve projected onto it?

My teacher, Qapel, once said that some people—after being deeply hurt or betrayed by humans—withdraw their life force from human relationships. They redirect their love to animals instead, pouring everything into them like a safe harbor. Then he added: “Please don’t do this. Love both humans and animals with open-hearted awareness. We’re all in this together.”

It made me pause.

We fall in and out of love with so many things—images of ourselves, of others, of objects. Ever fall head over heels for a painting, hang it on your wall, and then forget to even glance at it again?

It seems that when conditions are just right, I can remain in a state of love and devotion. But that's not unconditional love. That’s a love with terms and agreements. And my true longing? It’s for the kind of love that doesn’t waver. The kind that endures—not in spite of, but through life’s messiness.

Unconditional love feels like the end game. The final resting place of the restless heart. And I sense that kind of love isn’t possible without deep awareness.

Is love simply awareness unburdened—by fear, by clinging, by rigid beliefs? Is unconditional love the spacious field that quietly holds conditional love within it?

What would it feel like to love all of life, not just its more comforting parts? Could a dog teach me this?

If I truly loved the universe and everything in it the way I love dogs… would I still need a dog? Does universal love dissolve desire, or just transmute it?

What is love, really? And why do I feel so soft and smitten, so melted and human, in the presence of dogs?

These are not just musings. They are the real questions—honest, vital. I sense they may carry me toward peace—this wild, tender peace my heart keeps sniffing out like a hound on the scent of home.

E.D. - blog writer reawakened!