ArcaNuova · Dogs · Family
Family on Four Paws – Why My Dogs Are the Only Clan I Truly Trust
There are many people in my life who are theoretically family. Biologically, morally, socially. But real family is something else.
Real family is someone who stays. Someone who does not manipulate. Someone who does not arrive when there is money and disappear when responsibility begins. Someone who does not pull at you, but stands beside you.
Ironically, I did not find this form of family among people, but in two Dobermanns.
Apollo and Wotan need nothing from me except time, closeness and clarity. They do not want my bank account, my property or my peace. They want only me. And Susanna. That is all.
They stay with me no matter where I am on my 300,000 square metres. They sleep at my feet. They guard the house. They rejoice when I open the door in the morning. They do not leave my side when I am ill. They have never tried to draw me into anything I do not want.
That is loyalty, not in the military sense, but in the emotional one.
These Dobermanns are not pets. They were allowed to become personalities. They are partners. They are children with power packs instead of schoolbags. And they are honest. Astonishingly honest.
Sometimes people search all their lives for belonging and do not find it in the past, in origin or in blood. They find it in two dogs who look at them as if they were the whole world, without asking anything in return.
They are not a substitute for family. They are my family. The only one that has never betrayed, disappointed or exploited me.
