Dog Medicine Quotes

“I needed a companion who had no judgment, with whom I had no history, who would make it known that I was loved, who would never, ever hurt me.”
― Julie Barton, Dog Medicine: How My Dog Saved Me From Myself

“The way Bunker loved me, so fully, clearly, and without exception, helped me remember every day to try to bring that kind of love to myself and others in my life.”
― Julie Barton, Dog Medicine

“I’m sure she can wait until tomorrow,” my”
― Julie Barton, Dog Medicine: How My Dog Saved Me From Myself

“I took a deep breath and felt the blackness loosen its grip. Dog medicine. I’d found it, and I swallowed it whole.”
― Julie Barton, Dog Medicine

“The sorrow on that lonely walk back to my apartment was like the strike of lightning that cracked the dam. I didn’t know this then, but depression can be like a slow leak. Once the dam’s hit, water starts to seep through and as the days and weeks go by, the crack grows bigger.”
― Julie Barton, Dog Medicine

“Then, as was my habit, I placed this diagnosis right next to all the other diagnoses I’d absorbed over the years. Ugly, Weird, Stupid, Fat, Unlikable, please meet your newest teammate: Depressed.”
― Julie Barton, Dog Medicine

“My favorite place was officially the dark crease between the cushions on the back of the couch. My face felt best pushed deep into that crack. Sensory deprivation had become the only way to comfort myself. I needed to be alone with no light, no sounds, no smells, and as little air circulation as possible. The breeze from an opened door hurt my skin.”
― Julie Barton, Dog Medicine

“I studied each page with surprising focus and found myself returning to golden retrievers: easy to train, loyal, big, great running partners, and beautiful. A family dog. My new family.”
― Julie Barton, Dog Medicine

“In that moment, of course, I knew. There he was. I hadn’t been forced to choose; I’d been chosen. I picked him up and he licked my nose. He smelled like dirt and metal and wet dog. My dog had found me.”
― Julie Barton, Dog Medicine

“I couldn’t imagine treating myself kindly, with gentle understanding. But I could, without question, do that for my dog. Perhaps part of what began to save me was that I started creating this sacred, safe space where he and I met. In this space, there was not ridicule. There was no doubt or loneliness. There was no sorrow or anger. It was just pure, beautiful being. It was us looking at the world with wide-eyed, forever hopeful puppy wonder.”
― Julie Barton, Dog Medicine

“I devoured research about how repeated trauma in a young person will induce chronic activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis – the system that directs how a body responds to stress, the “fight or flight” reaction.”
― Julie Barton, Dog Medicine

“What if I just decided that all of those mistakes were teachings? Maybe all of those choices I’d made were so that I could learn that what I wanted wasn’t drama and sorrow, just love: love in the way Bunker gave love. Unconditional. No expectations. No strings. Just love, because what is more beautiful than that?”
― Julie Barton, Dog Medicine

“I want us to try to be together. I think we’d be great.”
― Julie Barton, Dog Medicine

“But who will protect me from the monsters?”
― Julie Barton, Dog Medicine

“In New York, I would walk down shadowy sidewalks dreaming of the openness of central Ohio, yearning for roads flanked by fields, for their freedom and isolation. These roads cradled me. I realized this now. I’d been trying to hate Ohio, because it was so hard to be at home. But the land had actually always been there for me all along. As a child, the moon had lit my room on sad nights. I’d wandered cornfields and puttered around at Lehman’s Pond. Those were some of my best childhood memories.”
― Julie Barton, Dog Medicine