What the World Needs Now
Can your love for your dog change the world? photo: AdobeStock
Can your love for your dog change the world? After over 30 years as a veterinary internist, I’ve come to see how our relationships with our pets add warmth and emotional capacity to our lives. And I believe that love can be shared and spread throughout our communities and beyond.
Just last night I received an email from a dear client thanking me for providing a treatment that enabled their extremely ill dog, Addie, to be present at their wedding. Something that had seemed impossible had become a reality: from dream to desperation, then to hope and elation. People experiencing these kinds of emotional extremes are often so raw, so vulnerable - yet out of this experience they often develop a deep pool of hope and love.
That is the bond I work for. It’s my life’s mission to safeguard and protect beloved animals because I see what that bond can do for humans and their pets every day.
And why is that? Why is that connection - the proverbial human/animal bond - so powerful, inscrutable, and important? Because it clearly can do so much for us as people, and hence for our community, and further, for our world.
How often do we hear that working through the pain of love and loss makes us better people? There must be truth to that. If you collect all the love that people share with their pets, it gives us the capacity to do good and extend that love. Beyond illness. Beyond differences. Beyond prejudices.
The unconditional love that pets provide speaks to us with unfathomable depth and profundity. It can balance us as we stare at our screens, watch the news, or agonize over the state of our country and our world. It can fulfill us during times when we are at a loss for human companionship. The recent uncertainties, pressures, and tragedies of the pandemic and other national and world events have only accentuated that devotion and that need. Pets fill up our frazzled human souls, warm us, and make us laugh. We need that.
If a pet has given you the capacity for greater empathy, reach out when you can. Share that warmth, that depth, and slowly your web of interaction will grow. Unconditional love has a way of nurturing, spreading like a small wildfire, warming and providing nutrients so that subsequent generations can flourish. It starts with a few acts and builds. Slowly but progressively, it improves our world.
I cannot speak for the world, but I can speak for the individuals I see every day. The ones who are kissed by their dog or kneaded by their cat. The ones who cuddle and cry over their beloved animals as they go to their eternal sleep. And I know that these are better people because they opened up and shared their life with another being.
That love, that emotion, is bound to spread, and for that, I am grateful. The world needs it now more than ever.