I just shared a moment with my newest foster dog. He flew to my state yesterday so I could foster him and find a new home.

He was hanging out with me in the kitchen, and somehow I ended up on the floor with him on my lap, giving him a cuddle.

I know dogs generally object to cuddles, and so I was rather attentive to his body language for feedback on this interaction. If you took a picture of this dog, in my arms, from a distance, he probably looked somewhat tense. However, his face revealed how relaxed he was: His eyes were closed.

Here was this dog, on my lap, tucked up to my chest, my arms supporting him, and my head over him – and this dog, totally at my mercy and relaxed, after knowing me for about 30 hours.

Buddy having a cuddle in the sunshine.

And I got to thinking, aren’t dogs amazing?

After posting about the stresses of a modern dog’s life, this dog checks all the boxes you could. This dog, in the last two weeks, was found as a lost dog and brought into a pound facility. Here, he lived in a run with other dogs. Then, he was taken to a vet and desexed, before returning to the pound. Then a stranger came and removed him from the facility, and he rode in a car. Once he got out of the car, he was put in a crate and in that crate he was moved around, experienced a myriad of noises, and ended up being kilometres up in the air. Then, another stranger removed him from the crate and walked him on lead to another vehicle. He got to a new place, got to investigate a little bit, and watch TV with strangers on the couch, before returning to the crate for several hours for sleep. Upon waking, he had to meet dogs he had never met before. He then tolerated being hand fed most of his meal, with some weirdo saying “Buddy!” while running away. Then he met yet more strangers.

And then, he crawls onto my lap and peacefully cuddles, like humans are the best thing in the world.

I’m glad he will never know that the last few weeks happened because his past family never bothered to microchip him, and never bothered to visit the pound to see if he may be there. And I’m glad he’ll never know that these actions may have even cause him to be put to sleep.

All Buddy knows is that life is pretty good today, and I plan on making every day for the rest of his life ‘pretty good’.