Packing for Adventure

There are a million reasons to love having a dog, but let’s start with the obvious one: built-in best friend. Dogs don’t care if you’re wearing yesterday’s sweatpants or if your hair looks like you wrestled a leaf blower. They just want to be near you, and sometimes sitting directly on top of you.

Dogs somehow always know your mood. Sad? Here, have a warm nose on your arm. Stressed? They’ll flop across your lap like a fluffy emotional support pancake, leaving you powerless to do anything but relax. Trudy, our Belgian Malinois, is sometimes referred to as the “Trudy blanket” due to her incredible talent in completely smothering you with affection – forcing you into a long, nap-filled procrastination session that makes all your stressors temporarily vanish (and come back tenfold when you wake up…)

We recently took our dogs on a camping trip, bringing them along for a four-wheeling adventure. It was a revisit of a trip we took over ten years ago with just me, Chris, and our border collie Stanley. Now older and arthritic, we wanted Stanley to have a memorable experience reliving a past beloved memory (only this time with kids and sister Trudy the Belgian Malinois in tow).

The sweetest part of being a proud dog owner has been watching Stanley and Trudy adore my kids. They have been shockingly patient in the most extreme circumstances, such as toddlers sticking fingers in their eyeballs.

At the end of the day, dogs remind us: love big, nap often, and greet your favorite people like they’ve been gone for years – even if they just went to get the mail.

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