Yours a dog’s life, do you moan?
Courage, brother! cease to groan.
Many men, as on they jog,
Live much worse than any dog.

Yours a dog’s life? Then, my boy,
It’s a life crammed full of joy!—
Merry breezes, meadows fair,
Birds and brooks and sunny air.

Dogs? why, dogs are never sad!
See them capering like mad!
See them frisk their jolly way
Through the livelong laughing day!

Dog’s life? Then you’ll never rust.
Dog’s life? Then you’ll hope and trust;
Then you’ll say in jaunty glee,
“Bones have been, and bones will be.”

Cheery, active, trusting, true,—
There’s a canine goal for you!
Live a dog’s life, if you can:
You will be the better man!
~Anonymous

I had a dog
  who loved flowers.
    Briskly she went
        through the fields,

yet paused
  for the honeysuckle
    or the rose,
        her dark head

and her wet nose
  touching
    the face
         of every one

with its petals
  of silk,
    with its fragrance
         rising

into the air
  where the bees,
    their bodies
        heavy with pollen,

hovered—
  and easily
     she adored
        every blossom,

not in the serious,
  careful way
    that we choose
        this blossom or that blossom—

the way we praise or don’t praise—
  the way we love
     or don’t love—
        but the way

we long to be—
  that happy
    in the heaven of earth—
        that wild, that loving.
~Mary Oliver “Luke” from Dog Songs

More than once I’ve seen a dog
waiting for its owner outside a café
practically implode with worry. “Oh, God,
what if she doesn’t come back this time?
What will I do? Who will take care of me?
I loved her so much and now she’s gone
and I’m tied to a post surrounded by people
who don’t look or smell or sound like her at all.”
And when she does come, what a flurry
of commotion, what a chorus of yelping
and cooing and leaps straight up into the air!
It’s almost unbearable, this sudden
fullness after such total loss, to see
the world made whole again by a hand
on the shoulder and a voice like no other.
~John Brehm from “If Feeling Isn’t In It”

We all need to know a love like this:
so binding, so complete, so profoundly filling:
its loss so empties our world of all meaning,
our flowing tears run dry.

So abandoned, we woeful wait,
longing for the return of
the gentle voice, the familiar smile,
the tender touch and encompassing embrace.

With unexpected restoration
when we’ve done nothing whatsoever to deserve it-
we leap and shout with unsurpassed joy,
this world without form and void is made whole again.