Mission Wonderpaws: Operation “Is This Real Life?”
Filed by: Bella, Director of Domestic Operations (and Chaos)
Claire looks at me sometimes with a look of pure, startled wonder.
It’s the look you get when you realise the dream you’ve been having is real — that the stuffed toy you cuddle is breathing, and that the small, temporary visitor has unpacked her squeaky toys for good.
I see it when I trot across the room, my ears doing their floppy, half-hearted impression of wings, my paws thudding out a four-beat rhythm on the floorboards. She’ll freeze, her head tilting in that universal human sign of I am processing a miracle. Her smile is soft, a silent question: “How is it possible that you are mine?”
And I get it. I really do.
Because Claire is a first-time Dog Human, and the learning curve has been… steep. She has learned that silence is not golden; it is suspicious. It means I have located a treasure of unparalleled chewability. She has learned that in my world, anything that cannot outrun me is, by default, part of the curriculum at the Academy of Bite Sciences.
Table legs are for teething.
Slippers are for relocation.
The remote is for deconstruction.
Gravity is a fickle opponent, constantly failing to defend its sock allies.
But beneath the nibbled edges and the 2 a.m. carpet-circuits of joy, Claire has uncovered the real secret: love doesn’t always speak. Sometimes, it arrives as a package of fur and fervour — a creature of absolute emotional honesty.
I am a creature of action, not subtext. My joy is a public event. My exhaustion is a gravitational force. My love for her is not an abstract concept; it is a physical law. It is a heartbeat with legs.
So when she looks down, her eyes wide with the daily surprise of me, and whispers, “You’re really here,”
my tail writes the answer in the air.
Yes. I am.
And I think she’s finally realising that in making me feel real, she has never been more real herself.
