Dogs, Emotions, and Friendship

Am I writing this post at a reasonable hour? Of course not, it's 3:04 am. But after watching a sad Japanese remake of Marley & Me and crying for about an hour, I wanted to talk to you guys and friendship and bonding with others.

From what my parents told me, in the early years of my life I had a huge fear of dogs. When I say early years, I literally mean like ages 1-3, so having a fear of giant animals compared to the size of me probably wasn’t that irrational, but anyway, I feared dogs. My parents didn’t want this to be an issue when they decided they were ready to get a dog, so they went about it in the only way they could think of:

Introducing…Henry.

Henry was a beautiful long-legged black & white staffy, I believe they went with that name due to the way his fur made it so that he had a substantial white ‘H’ on his back. When my parents introduced me to little puppy Henry, I was told I said one quote that would become a running joke even to this day:

“That’s going back on Tuesday”

Initially, I wanted nothing to do with the dog, but as time passed, my fear of dogs faded, and I fell in love with him. Henry was my brother, compared to my other brothers who were both arseholes growing up, this one was my favorite and Henry was a part of my life from the ages of 3-19. On the 28th of April this year, Henry passed away. After having multiple strokes which he recovered from most of them, he, unfortunately, had one that he couldn’t get back up from, but being 15 years old, we didn’t expect him to. When Henry passed, for me it felt like a genuine part of me was ripped away, I felt uncomfortable and lost with no knowledge of how to deal with it. How do you recover from something that was a part of your life for 16 years just disappearing in an instant? I could never replace the bond I have with that dog, but it made me aware of the other important bonds I had in my life, the main ones being my family and my friends.

Looking back on it, a moment that truly made me value connections and bonds with people was a moment with my best friend on the bus. At the time, my friend and I were not that close, we had just stumbled out of a club, and on the bus journey back, we got to share stories and found out that we had recently been through the exact same situation of losing our childhood dogs. It tore us apart, but talking about it and sharing our thoughts and feelings made it more bearable to think about. It helped us open up and talk, not only just about our dogs, but ourselves and how we were actually feeling. If it was not for that conversation, I would have never found my best friend…fuck that…I would never have

found my brother. So, for that, I will always be grateful, and they are about to get named dropped because they fucking deserve it. Joel, thank you brother, for everything.

Sometimes something significant needs to happen for you to become aware of the bonds you have around you and it makes you realise and even fear what would happen if those bonds were to break. If not for the variety of unique connections we have with people, then what do we really have? Nothing. Without bonds, without connections, without friendship, there is no quality of life.

Now that you have made it this far into this post, I need you a

ll to do something for me.

I need you to sit and think about the people that mean the most to you. Think about those people in your life that you could call at 3 am having a breakdown because you know that they are someone that can sort you out. Once you have these people in your head, boot up your phone and send them a message. I want you to tell them how much they mean to you, I want you to tell them why you mean so much to you. I want you to tell them how shit your life would be if they were not in the picture because you know what? Everyone needs to hear that sometimes because it can be so easy to forget what you mean to people. I am only asking that you do this one thing, please.

Wherever you are, whoever you are, I hope you have an amazing motherfucking day.

And never forget,

Don’t Stop.