The Unexpected Thing About Living With a Beagle

People ask me sometimes why I write about Buddy — why living with a beagle, of all the dogs in the world, seemed worth an entire book.

Why not a braver dog, they say. A bigger one. A rescue with a dramatic backstory. Why a beagle who steals socks and barks at the postman and occasionally eats things that are not food?

And I always think: but that’s exactly why.

The Truth About Living With a Beagle

In fact, Buddy is not a heroic dog in the traditional sense. He has never saved anyone from a burning building. He has never herded sheep or sniffed out treasure or guided anyone safely home through a blizzard.

What he does, every single day without fail, is this:

He finds joy in things.

Not big things. Small things. For instance, the specific patch of grass on our morning walk that smells, apparently, of something extraordinary. The exact moment I open the kitchen cupboard that sounds like — but is not — the treat bag. And there’s a sunbeam on the floor that appears for approximately eleven minutes every afternoon. Buddy will rearrange his entire body just to lie in it.

He is relentlessly, stubbornly, chaotically present.

What Buddy Taught Me About Slowing Down

I spent a long time in my corporate career being very focused on what came next. The next meeting, the next deadline, the next rung on the ladder. It’s a useful way to get things done. It’s a terrible way to notice a sunbeam.

Then Buddy fixed that, gradually, without meaning to and without any interest in getting credit for it.

Now I notice the sunbeams, the good coffee, and the quiet mornings. I notice the way Antwerp looks on a grey Tuesday, too — when the light comes through at a certain angle and makes everything look like a painting.

So I write those things into the books. The small moments that feel enormous if you’re paying attention. Buddy’s observations about the world — the squirrel, the sprinkler, the mysterious lid on the bin — are all really just an excuse to say: look at this. Isn’t this something?

So that’s why I write about Buddy.

Not because he’s perfect. Not because he’s wise. Definitely not because he gives the socks back.

But because he has never, not once, forgotten how to find the good thing in an ordinary day.

And some days, that’s the most useful quality in the world.

If you’ve made it to the end of this post, I hope you go notice something good today. Buddy insists.

His full diary —chaos, life lessons, and all — is in Unleashed: Buddy’s Diary. It’s the kind of book that tends to get read in one sitting. 🐾