The Love We Always Needed

Valentine’s Day has a way of making us pause and take stock of the love in our lives. Some chase grand gestures, candlelit dinners, or roses wrapped in delicate ribbons, hoping to capture a feeling that often seems just out of reach. Others retreat, feeling that love is a fickle thing—one that fades, changes, or never quite lands the way they imagined. But there’s a secret to love, one that we humans often forget in the pursuit of something cinematic: the purest, most unwavering love isn’t found in another person—it’s found in the warm weight of a dog curled up at your feet.

Dogs do not love in halves or conditions. There are no grand expectations, no moments of doubt, no concern for whether they are loved back in the same measure. They love with abandon, with an eagerness that we, as humans, often hesitate to offer. Their love is a lesson—a reminder of what it means to show up fully, without hesitation, and give without expecting anything in return.

Every day, they teach us how to love better. When we wake up groggy and slow-moving, their excitement is unrelenting, as if our mere presence is a gift. When we return home from an exhausting day, they greet us as if we are the best thing to ever happen to them. And in the quiet moments—the ones where we question our worth, where the world feels too big or too heavy—they sit beside us, heads resting in our laps, reminding us that we are enough just as we are.

This is why pet parents know a different kind of love, a love that has shaped them into something better. Because when you are loved unconditionally, you start to believe that you deserve it. A dog doesn’t care if you’ve had a bad day, if your hair is a mess, if you feel like you aren’t enough. They see the parts of you that deserve love without needing explanation. And when you are loved so purely, you start to love yourself in return. You start to carry that warmth with you, offering it to others, learning to extend the same grace to yourself that your dog does every single day.

So while Valentine’s Day may come wrapped in heart-shaped chocolates and fleeting romances, the kind of love that endures is the love that waits patiently at your door, the love that presses a wet nose against your palm in the morning, the love that never questions, never falters, and never leaves.

At the end of the day, the only love we truly need is a dog’s. And if we’re lucky, we get to spend every moment proving ourselves worthy of it.