Gratitude Lives in Dog Mom Moments
It is easy to forget that days are quietly passing us by. We rush through work, scroll through our phones, squeeze in walks between chores, and before we know it, a whole season with our dogs has gone. We complain that days drag, then wave them goodbye as they blur together. One day it is five years ahead of the moment we remember so vividly: when we brought them home, when we signed the adoption papers, when they first fell asleep on our chest. Last week barely lives in our short-term memory, yet our dogs have been right there, padding through every single day with us.
We start to ask, where has the time gone with them? Why does it feel like life is passing us by while the dog hair on the couch and the toys in the hallway remain constant?
We can leave those questions to the universe, set ourselves on cruise control, and let days blend into each other. Or we can choose something different. We can decide to pick apart each day and find one small dog mom moment that feels memorable, lucky, or even just gently good.
Maybe it is the way your dog’s ears perk when they hear your keys. Maybe it is the weight of their head on your lap after a long day. Maybe it is the silence of a late-night walk when it is just you, your dog, and the sound of their tags in the dark.
Research on gratitude shows that these tiny moments matter. In one well-known study, people who regularly wrote down what they were grateful for felt more optimistic and better about their lives than those who focused on frustrations. For dog moms, that list can be incredibly specific: the soft snores at 3 a.m., the excited spins when you pick up the leash, the way they seem to know when you are not okay and quietly sit a little closer.
It is important that we name and notice the good things that happen to us with our dogs.
It is easy to pour our stress onto paper or into a friend’s DMs. We feel the urge to vent, to list the things that hurt, the things that scare us. There is nothing wrong with that. Yet it should be just as important to share what gives us hope, what makes us feel grateful to be alive with this animal who chose us back.
Gratitude does not have to live only in a journal. For some of us, gratitude looks like a walk around the neighborhood, leash in hand, where we greet our neighbors, watch our dog sniff the same favorite patch of grass, and remember that this is the place we get to call home. To breathe in the air we usually rush through. To feel our knees and ankles crack as they unlock their potential for movement with intention, dog trotting happily ahead.
Gratitude can be practiced with a journal, with a note in your phone, or simply with quiet, thoughtful attention.
Thanking someone mentally or listing all the reasons we are grateful for them is powerful. The same goes for our dogs. You can mentally thank your pup for their loyalty, their chaos, their joy, their patience with your schedule, their ability to make you laugh when you most need it. Our lives often feel like a set of unbalanced scales: too many worries on one side, not enough lightness on the other. The beauty is that gratitude can act as a small counterweight. A quick, silent “thank you for being here” can soften an otherwise heavy day.
We can be grateful for our place in this moment in time with our dogs, knowing that at least for now, there will be more small moments worth noticing ahead of us. A future nap together, a future road trip, a future walk in a new park you have not discovered yet.
We can choose to walk through life thanking the earth beneath our dog’s paws, the loved ones who support us, and ourselves for making it through another day together. And when tomorrow comes, we can look for one new thing to be grateful for in this bond. A tail wag. A nose boop. A warm body pressed against our feet.
Gratitude lives there, in those everyday dog mom moments that are easy to overlook and unforgettable once we decide to see them.
