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While leaving work on Thursday, I exited out of the garage by the hidden Safeway entrance and noticed a dog tied up waiting for its owner. The sadness and longing in its eyes, never looking away from the door, caused me to forcefully focus my mind on something else. Anything else, lest I finish my walk to the subway with tears rolling down my cheeks.

I was a dog boy. I am a dog man. My mother loves her cats and after she escaped my father, she had cat after cat but no dogs. During my lifetime, I had 2 dogs that I absolutely loved–Blackie and George.

Blackie was my black german shepard from early childhood. I was too young to remember when he joined the family, but I can remember he was truly my best friend. He was also my protector from friends, family and foes. One day a wild dog cornered me and my cousin Wendy and it was only because of the sudden appearance of Blackie that we got away without injury. Blackie left us the way many childhood pets do. He was given away behind a lie to a child (poor Jol).

The details around George are cloudy even though he was my dog during my early teens. After my father remarried, he lived in a doghouse behind our new house until one day I found him shivering, bloody and with a couple gaping wounds. Somehow he had escaped his chain and been hit by a car. The vet repaired him mostly but he died a few months later. George was a small, black mutt and I can clearly remember his joy every time he saw me. He would tense up, smile and bend his body into a C-shape while almost dancing foot to foot.

It is the blind devotion that makes me a dog lover. As any of my best friends through the years can tell you, I am so insecure about my worth as a friend that I can’t bring myself to consider them my equal in the friendship. I am always the sidekick in my mind.

Better yet, ask the guys who have tried to be my close friends over the years. If I didn’t pursue their friendship first, I was always suspicious. Why would they want to be my friend? What do they really want from me? I have ruined so many potential friendships over the years because I was too skeptical.

But with dogs, you never question their love. It is in their eyes each time they see you.