.SOMETIMES RAW.

Your dog takes a highly individualized approach to your care. Instead of saying your Vitamin D is low and suggesting you get more sun, your dog takes you on three walks a day. If you have insomnia, they’ll lay on your stomach and stare into your soul until you fall asleep every night for the next fifteen years. If you’re anemic, they’ll murder a squirrel and leave it under your pillow. Would Dr. L. do that? Didn’t think so.

Forget long wait times and running between offices to see specialists. Your dog only makes house calls. And they are available 24-7. If you have a high fever in the middle of the night, your dog will check your vitals every thirty minutes from the most scientifically advanced medical facility: under the couch.

Ask your doctor if they want to go to the park with you, and they’ll up your antidepressants and refer you to a therapist. Ask your dog, and they’ll spin around in circles and run to the door, no questions asked.

When your dog is your doctor, you’ll never go to the emergency room for a debilitating migraine and get sent home with two Aspirin and a huge bill. There are no unexpected costs because your dog doesn’t know what money is. Or bills. Instead of cash or card, they accept TreatPay, a simple behaviour-based exchange. You choose what you pay based on the quality of care and if they’ve been a good boy.

Rather than spending hours on the phone begging your insurance to cover life-saving care, your dog begs you to let him cover all treatment at 100 percent. Your dog is so opposed to private insurance he chewed and swallowed your insurance card, and you had to spend eight hundred euros to get his stomach pumped. That’s how committed your dog is to your health care.

Your doctor is always overbooked, but your dog has no other patients and no concept of time. They will never make you feel like a hypochondriac for scheduling a follow-up every time you have a stomachache. Has your gastroenterologist ever been so excited to see you that they peed on the floor? Probably not.

Your doctor needed eight years of school and a stethoscope to hear your irregular heartbeat. Your 20 kilo medical prodigy, doggie, hasn’t even graduated from PetSmart Puppy School, and they can detect your panic attack from the next room.

Most doctors only help you after you’re sick or injured, but your dog’s preventative care is more proactive. They nose out all health hazards, such as garbage trucks, the wind, metal sidewalk grates, and old ladies with shopping baskets on wheels. When was the last time your orthopedic surgeon dragged you half a block to avoid a collision with a kid on an electric scooter?

Your doctor doesn’t call you every so often to check-in. Your dog runs over to your desk every hour to see how work is going and lower your blood pressure by letting you scratch their neck.

Your dog will never minimize your symptoms or suggest it’s “all in your head.” When you cry out in pain, they howl back in sympathy. When you sneeze, they bark until the neighbors call the police.

Your dog loves you unconditionally for their entire life. They’ll follow you to the other side of your apartment and back just to rest their little head on your feet. When you’re sad, they roll over on their back and look at you upside-down like, “I’ll take my belly rub now,” because they know it makes you laugh. They are your family. Your doctor calls you Pamela even though your name is Daniela.

The only thing your dog can’t do to improve your health is prepare your taxes. For that, you’ll need a cat.

I had read somewhere that it’s good to keep a gratitude journal. We forget how many great things there are in our lives and when you start jotting them down and really get introspective about even the littlest of things, it is amazing how all the terrible things in life don’t seem as bad. Gratitude can surprise you. Once you start seeing things in a positive way, you can make almost anything seem like a gift. At first, it is difficult to get to the things that matter. My journal started off like this: 

I am grateful for air – I need it to breathe. 

I am grateful for food – I need it to live. 

I am grateful for water – it is what my body is 80% of. 

Then, after listing five pages of life-sustaining needs, I became angry with my journal (as you probably already are) and decided I needed to dig a little deeper which made me think of animals. Don’t ask me why. I am weird sometimes.

Animals don’t talk. At first, I thought, Oh, that’s a shame, poor things cannot communicate to us. But then I thought, If some people are annoying, think about how bad it would be to come home from work and listen to your dog or cat tell you what it did all day long. First, your pet would berate you for not paying enough attention to it. “Well, it’s about time! It seems like you have been gone forever. I have no concept of time and I am ageing faster than you, you would think you would want to spend as much time with me as you could. Why did you even get me? To pet once in a while? Oh! Thank you, master. Look, I am bored. I have this one flea that is driving me nuts. I give and give and give. I am your best friend, I love you unconditionally, and what do you do for me? Oh, you feed me. That same boring food every day. I see what you eat. You think I am stupid? I know there is variety in your meals, but I, for some reason, don’t deserve anything but this monotony.”

Then the animal would go into a longwinded, boring monologue about the day. “Okay, this morning there is this bird outside chirping and chirping and chirping and so I start barking, right? And the bitch woman who walked by screams, “Shut up” to me. She doesn’t tell the stupid bird to shut up, just me. So, I barked a few more times just to piss her off. I mean, she cannot tell me what to do, you know what I am saying? I hate her. Then, I heard something a few streets away, so I started barking again- and guess what? Yep, she started yelling at me again. It is not like she doesn’t make noise of her own. She has this loud music playing on this thing called “phone” I think. They yell constantly and when they do people cheer and applaud. Give me a break. I am supposed to just lie around and make no noise? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I am just in a bad mood. I think I will just have a biscuit and head to bed… Oh, can you get it for me?! I can’t get it myself!”

It turns out the main reason I love dogs is that they don’t talk. 

Before my gratitude journal began, there were things out in the world that I wished never existed, like mosquitos. Mosquitos, especially at night, are the most annoying thing I can think of. I know there is some scientific explanation for why even the mosquito plays a part in balancing out nature but doesn’t make up for the fact that many times I have spent the better part of what was supposed to be a good night’s sleep hunting those bloodsuckers down. Then I thought, “Wait a minute… that’s what being grateful is all about. It is about the mosquito and the fly and other bothersome creatures. If we didn’t have them, what would I complain about?” Who wants a world where there isn’t a reason to complain? 

There are people in this world who never complain. “Hey, you know Chris’s girlfriend, Anna? She never complains about anything. Isn’t that great?” What am I supposed to talk to her about? Eventually, that is how people bond. What a boring relationship if every conversation went, “You like humidity? Me, too.”

“I love when mosquitos bit me, it reminds me I am alive!” “You know what doesn’t bother me? Frostbites… Yeah, it makes me forget I have fingers for a while.” 

Small talk would be impossible. Small talk is something I used to dread. Now, since I have found ways to be grateful, I realize that without small talk people at parties would just stare at each other and eat twice as many chips. Now I love to start up a conversation with someone and discover, through small talk, where they live. How fascinating. 

“How long have you lived here?” 

“Oh, for about five years.”

“Isn’t it nice?”

“We love it.”

“Great. I am gonna go talk to that guy over there about how unseasonably cold it is this summer.”

“Okay, I should probably stand by the meat platter and discuss where to buy the freshest vegetables.” 

“Isn’t it fantastic we aren’t just staring at each other?” 

“Yeah, this is a really good party.”

My gratitude journal is turning out to be an exercise in tolerance. I stubbed my toes on my table and realized I should wear shoes inside. My dog knocked over my plant and it made me hang all my plants. Now I have more room for books and candles! 

Gratitude is about taking that frown and turning it upside down. How can you turn a frown upside down when it is already down? It should be upside up. Gratitude is looking on the brighter side of life, even if it means hurting your eyes. Gratitude is something we can learn from each other if someone will talk to you. Gratitude is appreciating the things we cannot have, like a talking dog. 

When you wake up feeling great and everyone tells you how tired you look.

When you go to see the dermatologist to check a mole and he asks where you want Botox.

When a thirty-year-old guy arrives at a party and doesn’t even glance at you.

When you can guess from his personality what kind of a lover he is.

When the Canadian Prime minister is younger than you or pretty much every intern.

When you have more hangovers than actual parties.

When you no longer know who all the hip actors or singers are.

When someone says you have a sexy gaze, but you are actually just squinting because you don’t want to get your glasses out.

When you tell someone you have known them since they were in diapers.

When you share an anecdote from ten years ago and realise it is actually been twenty.

When you would rather go to bed early to make the most of the next day.

When you are just excited to go home. And to bed.

When your colleague was born the same year you graduated.

When people no longer ask if you plan on having another baby.

When a younger woman says she hopes to look like you someday.

When you go to the ob-gyn for mammograms rather than birth control.

When you feel an ache somewhere and fear it might be the beginning of the end.

When selecting your year of birth on a website means scrolling down forever.

When the face ID on your phone doesn’t recognize you in the morning.

When you are told that you are “damn hot for your age”.

When you smile at the naïvité of a young woman’s remark, whereas before you would have just found her stupid.

When you think that’s a pillow mark on your cheek, but it is still there a week later.

When you forget that it is a bad idea to plan on working while on holiday.

When you forget what your alcohol tolerance is. You are still convinced that you can handle yourself five glasses in.

When you forget that new love stories come with baggage: workaholism, travel, and sometimes even an ex-wife and kids.

When you forget that you have to pick your battles. You cannot get hung up on everything that bugs you.

When you forget that happiness is discipline. It comes from you.

Things that don’t count as a workout.

When you forget that working out is vital for your mind.

When you forget all those times you tell yourself you are exercising (when actually, you are not)

When you flex your butt while brushing your teeth.

When you flex your butt again while waiting for the elevator.

When you finally take the stairs.

When you make love. You read in some magazines about the quantitative relationship between sex and energy expenditure. The 150 calories on average, per go, really adds up.

When you carry your child in one arm and change sides regularly, he is basically a dumbbell. (ha!)

When you dance (while drinking) and you persuade yourself that sweating is proof of your muscular exertion (and not just a sign that your body is trying to get rid of the alcohol through the pores of your skin).

When you leave late for a meeting and you walk very fast to try to get there on time, you tell yourself that there are speed-walking competitions, so you are working out.

When you rode your bike to work until your bike got stolen. It was a good month while it lasted.

When you watch basketball on TV, shouting in support of your team, and you end up exhausted, concluding, “WE played well.”

When you sit in the sauna. Because you have decided that this qualifies as “exercise”.

When you try to remember something because your memory is a muscle too.