While we love the utility canines offer, we are not pet people, so we don’t own one. Instead we like to say we have part ownership of our friends’ mongrels — and they must somehow sense the connection because we find them at our door from time to time.

For instance, this is Skeeter. His actual owners probably think he’s out surveying the area when he wanders off from their house, but I know he’s really escaping so he can visit us. He loves us (I mean, who doesn’t). When we met I didn’t even like yipping, over-confident little dogs, but he has slowly chipped away at the old memories of my best friend’s Chihuahua that bit me for no reason when I was eight, so now we invite him in when he shows up.

He and I have only known each other for about five months, yet he’s basically mine (sorry Paul). He’s the first little dog I respect. And I didn’t really understand why we get along so well until I sat for him this weekend: since he’s never stayed at our house without his owners for longer than ten minutes, while they were gone I observed this pocket-sized beast for hours, expecting him to whine or complain of loneliness while we were together. Instead he just curled up on our kitchen rug, in the only sunlit spot, and slept. And when that sunspot moved, so did he. That was all he did.

There is something beautiful about picking a spot to lay based only on where the sun is shining, and not caring about anything else but staying warm. It makes me think that if I believed in reincarnation, I might want to come back in the next life as a dog — maybe even a Chihuahua — because humans are too complicated and self-centered.

We have ambition and expectations, so it’s impossible for humans to simply “be”. But not him; if he knows the world exists, he doesn’t care. Who knew I would grow up to emulate a dog.