There Is Also a Dog

by Kayley Loring

To every dog I’ve ever fallen in love with at first sight… Just because you live with some other human, that doesn’t mean we aren’t soulmates.

That’s me living my best life in my happy place, and if you think I’m doing it wrong, then fight me.

I don’t usually want a dog, but I want that one. Not a dog like that one—I want that exact one. There are framed photos of this incredible four-legged creature all over the cabin and not one image of a human, and that makes me feel uncharacteristically calm and happy.

I knew, somehow, that the man who took that picture was slowly breaking her heart, and she was strong enough to let him.

She snorts and grunts and licks her lips at me, wagging the bottom half of her stumpy little body because she barely has a tail. Because she loves me and we’re soulmates.

Agnes licks my nose—and the general area surrounding it—around forty-seven times, thus confirming that she does in fact love me more than anyone else on the planet.