“The First gut punch of grief hit me when I realized that 4 p.m. had come and gone unnoticed. Every day, a few minutes before the hour, my cute mutt, Jake, used to stare at me, nudging me to get his dinner. Now Jake is gone, and the disappearance of the comforting cadence he brought to my days is like a minute-by-minute reminder of my loss. Friends and family console me by telling me I saved him. But a rescue organization did that. By the time I met him, at an adoption event in 2013, he had already been saved, just not settled.
The real story is that Jake saved me. Before Jake, I was separated from the world by a pane of dirty glass. Me on one side, everything and everyone else on the other, obscured by streaks and hard-water drips. I kept to myself. I avoided socializing. I rarely reached out. I assumed the worst in people and figured they saw the worst in me.
Then I started waking this little black-and-tan creature around the East Village in Manhattan. His confident strut made people smile, even stop to chat. This undeniable proof that people want to connect and be kind shattered the glass. I became lighter, friendlier, more at ease.
Jake never rushed. He sniffed everything. If I tried to move him along, he’d plant his feet and pull back on the leash in protest. Once I let go of the idea that our walks were about getting somewhere, my internal ticking slowed down. I started to notice, to see the same people, to understand the rhythm of the neighborhood. I’d exchange hellos with the supers at the buildings on my block. I joked with the barber down the street. I tried out my Spanish with the handyman who rode his Huffy from job to job. And I started making small talk with my neighbor, who I’d lived across the hall from for seven years with barely a word. Eventually we developed a real friendship.
Jake was 2 when I adopted him, I was told. In truth, said the vet, he was between 4 and 6. He’d had a full life before me. Whatever had happened in that life left him anxious and skittish, had depleted his well of trust in humans. I met him too late to save him; the damage was done. Trusting me was a matter of survival. But I like to believe that his trust evolved into something else-that this scared little dog learned to be loved, same as me.”

–Lisa Arbetter is a writer in New York City