From Teddy’s great escape to Chipper’s final months, my dogs have taught me to trust in God’s guidance, rest in His comfort, and wait eagerly for His return.
There I was hurrying down the sidewalk downtown while my dog Teddy scurried through busy intersections, parking lots, and across streets, enraptured with the joy of freedom and the fun of the chase.
“Please don’t let him get hit by a car,” I prayed as my calls for him to come back went unheeded.
God was about to teach me another lesson through my dogs about living the Christian life, lessons He has been teaching me since I was a child. Here are just a few of those lessons.
God Knows What We Don’t
Teddy is a 10-pound Shichon (a Shih Tzu-Bichon mix) who is the alpha of the dog park; he even chases Rottweilers. He’s also a lifelong escape artist. Despite all our precautions to try to stop him from getting out of the yard, if Teddy sees an opportunity to run free, he takes it.
That day as the electric garage door closed, Teddy shot through the winnowing gap before I could grab him. Nothing is more fun to Teddy than the game of chase, and he is so agile it’s like trying to catch Barry Sanders in his heyday. But Teddy has no concept of cars or danger in general. He thinks everyone and everything is a new friend.
He took me on a six-block hunt, even dodging a kind woman who stopped her car to try to help me catch him.
Praise God Teddy didn’t get hit, and I finally caught and carried him all the way home.
That incident was another time I’ve been reminded of how I must look to God. How many times have I headed into danger or thought I knew what was best when God knew the right path all the time?
With dogs, the lesson comes nearly every day. If you own a dog, think about how many times you try to show them the right way? “Don’t eat that!” “Don’t roll in that!” Or simply “No!”
And every time, it’s a reminder of our own penchant for trying to go our own way.
C.S. Lewis compared it to walking a dog on a leash that takes the wrong side of a post. Both of you want to go forward, but to do so, the dog must come back around and go your way. But dogs usually just keep pulling — and so do we.
And every time we must learn that God knew better all along. Isaiah 55:8-9 states,
“‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,’ declares the Lord.
‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways
And My thoughts than your thoughts.”
It’s a lesson I learned through my dog Chipper, a massive Golden Retriever. When I picked him as a puppy, the breeder cautioned, “If you’re wanting an inside dog, you’re not going to want that one,” noting his already impressive size.
Chipper started as an outside dog, but as he worked his way into our hearts, he worked his way into our house too. He was my dear friend who for six years rode in the truck with me, laying his head on my shoulder as I drove and slept on the floor by my bed every night.
Usually Chipper let me sleep through the night and I would wake up to his head inches from my face, eagerly waiting for me to be done with my slumber. But one night Chipper didn’t let me sleep, because he needed to go outside, and not just once but several times.
Just a few days later I reached a turning point in my life. First, I learned that I had been let go from my job, and then, as soon as I got home, got a call from the vet telling me that Chipper had cancer; his liver had grown so large it was pressing on his bladder, which was the reason behind his frequent nighttime trips outside.
The next few months I looked for a job and tried to spend as much time as possible with Chipper. I prayed for a miracle. But no miracle, and no job, came, and two months after I got the bad news, I did one of the hardest things I have ever done: pull Chipper from the car to take him inside the vet’s office to be put down.
I spent the next few days racked with grief and guilt.
But I had to break out of my depression when I learned that same week that my dad, who had just moved to Washington, D.C. for a position in government, had been diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. Doctors said he had a 2 percent chance of survival.
The same week I got a phone call for a job interview at Liberty University.
My mom flew to D.C., and I spent the next month packing up their house to sell and move. That month was March 2020, when COVID hit and the world locked down. We prayed for a miracle for my dad, and one came. He is fully healed and again working and living in Washington, D.C.
What I learned through all the moving, all the trips to hospitals, and living in a loft apartment was that God knew all along that our journey was going to take a difficult turn. And He knew that Chipper couldn’t come along with us. So, in His mercy, He gave me what I needed: extra time to love and grieve Chipper before he passed.
Dogs Show Us Loyalty and Love
Dogs have also taught me about the kindness and love of God, even if they do it in their own imperfect way.
Martin Luther once wrote, “The dog is the most faithful of animals and would be much esteemed were it not so common. Our Lord God has made His greatest gift the commonest.”
No dog has been so faithful to me as my first dog, Freckles, a Cocker Spaniel-Border Collie mix, and a gift from my mom on my sixth birthday. Freckles was a rescue who had been saved from a puppy mill.
From the very first day I got her she was totally loyal to me and that evening when I went to take a bath, she laid her head in my hat and cried until I came back.
She was my friend for all my adventures. Once my sister and I left Freckles at home while we were playing at a neighborhood pond. Freckles searched for us and when she finally found us, she was soaking wet. Despite her hydrophobia, she had swum across the pond to get to us.
For years after, Freckles followed along wherever I went, whether to friends’ houses, a local parade, or through the woods.
One day though, though, she wandered off and didn’t come back. We searched for her, but never found her. Weeks went by without any sign of her.
Then finally she came limping home. She had a broken pelvis and had lost weight. We figured she had been hit by a car and had fought to get herself home. That day I had friends over who were also glad to see Freckles back, and they slept over at my house while I laid on the floor beside her all night. Fortunately, she recovered and we were able to enjoy her for a few more years.
There is little like that love and loyalty of dogs. In his newspaper essay “On Keeping a Dog,” G.K. Chesterton wrote.
“Somehow this creature has completed my manhood; somehow, I cannot explain why, a man ought to have a dog. A man ought to have six legs; those other four legs are part of him. Our alliance is older than any of the passing and priggish explanations that are offered of either of us; before evolution was, we were.”
The seemingly unshakable love of dogs reminds us of an infinitely greater love and loyalty: God never leaves us nor forsakes us. He died for us rather than abandon us to our sin and doom in Hell.
Dogs Teach Us To Have Simple Joy
Just as I have learned from my dogs’ love and loyalty, I’m also learning from their ability to find joy in almost anything. So many times I have said, “I wish I was more like Teddy.”
Teddy greets every day with excitement as though each time the sun rises it is the new “best day ever.”
Anytime I ask him, “Do you want to…?”, it doesn’t matter what the rest of the question is; the answer is always a fervent “Yes!”
But he also reminds me to slow down and find happiness in the simple gifts God has given.
One of Teddy’s favorite things to do is to lay on the deck and soak up the sun’s warming rays (as long as I am with him). There Teddy loves to simply watch the yard. Sometimes a hummingbird will come say hello to him, or he might focus in on a butterfly. But whether he gets any visitors or not, he just loves to enjoy God’s creation.
My other dog, a Golden Doodle named Bucky, finds his greatest happiness in rolling in grass.
And Freckles always loved to go with me on a bike ride. When she was old and her body racked with cancer my parents told me to spend one last day with her before we had to put her down. Even sick and elderly, she still yipped with excitement when I brought out the bicycle and we went on one last ride together, albeit much slower. But that didn’t matter to her, she ran alongside and enjoyed every moment of it.
Seeing all my dogs appreciate life, no matter their circumstances, reminds me to slow down sometimes and just sit and be grateful for the gifts God has given me, to soak in the good things of life.
Dogs Show Us Our Need for Comfort and Reassurance
For all their joy, my dogs have also taught me a lot about anxiety and fearfulness.
Bucky has been very anxious since we got him as a puppy. We’ve tried socializing him but to no avail. While Teddy runs the local dog park, Bucky hides, leaning against my leg and refusing to play with other dogs or greet other people.
Once a housefly scared Bucky so badly that he trembled from head to toe; I had to wrap him in a blanket and put my arm around him to help him relax.
As ridiculous as some of Bucky’s fears seem to me, I often say that he is me in dog form. I also have a propensity for anxiety and fear, and I often prefer to stay home, alone or with family, rather than go out among other people.
Just as Bucky needs me to reassure him that I will be there with him through all his fears, God assures me that He is with me. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 states,
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”
Sometimes I think about how silly my fears must seem to God, not unlike Bucky’s fear of a housefly. Yet if I, who am a sinful, fallen man will comfort my dog when he’s scared, how much more will God comfort me?
Waiting for the Master’s Return
Every dog I have ever had has had one source of anxiety greater than all else: my leaving them.
They wail, bark, cry, and try to go with me which breaks my heart. I tell them when I know my absence will be short, “I’ll be right back,” hoping that they will eventually learn that when I say I’ll be back soon, I really mean it.
And yet for all the sorrow they feel when I leave, their joy is equal or greater when I return. Teddy leaps into the air, cries, and holds my finger in his mouth as he leads me to sit down with him. Bucky runs to grab the most honored toy he can find and shows it to me with his tail wagging. And then we sit together and all is right in their world again.
When I see that, I sometimes reflect on Jesus’s words to us, His promise that He too will be back for us. John 14:1-3 says,
“Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.”
Am I eagerly anticipating His return with the same level of excitement that my dogs do for me? Do I yearn for my Savior to come back and get me, and do I believe His promise that He will be right back?
And when the sky opens and the trumpet sounds, will my joy at my Master’s call be equal to that of my little dogs when their infinitely less worthy master opens the door?
If my dogs love me so much, how much more should I love my Lord?
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