The Opposite of Instagram is a Dog.

On Canine Devotion, Human Narcissism, and Why the Greatest Love of Your Life May Be Sleeping on Your Foot

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I love my dogs. Sometimes they jostle to see who can wedge themselves closer to me, as if proximity alone might open some cosmic portal of communion. It’s glorious, like being the sun and watching small planets pull themselves into your orbit, not for gravity, but for love.

Frankly, I have trouble trusting anyone who doesn’t like dogs. It’s not a quirk; it’s a character flaw. If you don’t love dogs, you’re either hiding something or missing something—possibly both. At best, you’re stuck on yellow. At worst, you’re red-lit for life.

The bond between human and dog is not just emotional—it’s mythic. It precedes civilisation. It feels as if dogs have been with us since the dawn of time, padding softly through the fog of prehistory, curled beside our fires long before we built temples or towers.

Lord Byron, that magnificent rake, wrote in 1808 of his beloved Newfoundland, Boatswain: beauty without vanity, strength without insolence, courage without ferocity—all the virtues of man, without his vices. One suspects he liked the dog far better than most of his acquaintances.

Dogs ask for nothing beyond your nearness. They don’t demand an analysis of last night’s argument. They don’t care what you binge on Netflix. They don’t mind if you’ve had a bad day or a bad year. In a transactional world where everything has a price and most affection comes with an invoice, here is a creature who licks your wounds and guards your toilet time, and still thinks you’re a deity in sweatpants.

Their greatest ambition? To be where you are. Whether it’s scratching at the bathroom door, curling up beside your desk, or exploding with joy when you return from a ten-minute store run like a conquering hero, their love is not just evident—it is elemental.

Of course, the cynics (those spiritual amputees) scoff. Dogs, they say, are just Pavlovian gluttons—slavering for kibble and programmed for dependency. But this interpretation, like most reductionist views of love, misses the point entirely.

Science offers a rather different view. A 2014 fMRI study showed that dogs process their owner’s scent in the caudate nucleus—the brain’s reward centre. Translation: your smell gives them pleasure—more pleasure than food. You, dear reader, are more thrilling to your dog than beef.

Further research confirms what dog people already know: dogs read our faces like poems. In a 2016 study, they distinguished happy from angry expressions, reacting with empathy to distress. This is not the behaviour of a selfish beast—it is the mark of a creature who feels with you.

And when you gaze into your dog’s eyes—no, it isn’t lust, you degenerate-it is something far purer. Both you and your dog release oxytocin, the hormone of mother-infant bonding. That’s not co-dependency. That’s alchemy.

Who else in your life desires your presence so completely, so unconditionally? Not your boss. Not your barista. Not even, let’s be honest, your spouse. Does your partner come and check on you while you’re on the toilet? Your dog does. And with a far more forgiving nose, mind you.

Dogs couldn’t care less about your accomplishments or aesthetics. They’re not dazzled by degrees, job titles, or curated Instagram feeds. Their love is not a social contract; it’s a spiritual one. They lie beside you, still and content, needing no explanations. Just you. Present. Breathing. Alive.

Dogs are, in a way, little Buddhists with fur—furry monks of the moment. They live gloriously in the now. Not yesterday’s grievance, not tomorrow’s anxiety—just the joy of your return, the sound of your voice, the smell of dinner.

Where humans rehearse their regrets and premeditate their heartbreaks, a dog will simply rest its head on your knee and remind you, in a silence deeper than poetry, that this moment is enough. And in doing so, they shame our distracted minds into stillness.

They are mindfulness incarnate: no meditation app required.

This kind of loyalty is not born from anxiety or brokenness. It comes from something we’ve mostly lost: faith without pretence. Dogs are pack animals, yes—but unlike humans, they don’t politicise affection. Their love is not rationed according to social clout or past slights. They don’t “circle back” emotionally. They are, miraculously, just there.

Why must we dissect this? Why do we probe their loyalty like it’s a con job or a riddle to be solved? Why not simply accept their presence as a form of living grace? Not everything must be analysed to be real. Not every affection needs a footnote.

C.S. Lewis, in *The Four Loves*, described affection as the quiet, familiar love of shared life—the small rituals, the silent companionship. Dogs are its perfect embodiment. They love not for grand gestures but for the sound of your footsteps, the cadence of your morning routine, the smell of your socks.

Cats, bless their moody little hearts, offer affection like favours from royalty. You may approach, human, but only if you’ve pleased me. Dogs are no such tyrants. Their love is open-source. Constant. Absolute. If cats are art-house cinema, dogs are the Beatles: universal and unembarrassed about it.

Humans, with our baggage of ego and expectation, rarely achieve such unqualified connection. Disclaimers and unspoken agreements often mark our relationships. Dogs love us with a kind of reckless purity we are rarely brave enough to offer in return.

And yes, this bond is ancient. It’s not weakness. It’s not pathetic. It’s survival, yes, but also sublimity. Over millennia, dogs have evolved not just to live beside us but to understand us, to care for us, to want us. What is that if not a divine conspiracy? A gift disguised in fur and floppy ears?

So the next time your dog noses the bathroom door or plants herself like a sphinx by your desk, don’t brush it off. Don’t reduce it to neediness. Recognise it for what it is: love that does not traffic in language, strategy, or self-interest. Love without footnotes. Love without PowerPoint. Love without shame.

In a world increasingly allergic to unconditional anything, in a culture obsessed with what’s earned, transacted, and efficient, your dog’s love is an open defiance. A small rebellion. A reminder that there is, still, in this mad and muddled world, one creature that thinks you are enough.

And damned if they’re not right.

Good boy. Good girl.

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Toby and Malibu. My dear and loyal friends. Gifts from God.