When I was fifteen, my parents brought home a puppy on the same day I’d found out that my closest friends were going to the coast together over the summer and there wouldn’t be room for me in the holiday house. I remember lying in bed, scanning through all our recent interactions in my head like songs on my second-hand iPod, trying to figure out where I’d gone wrong. My mother came to the door with a conspiratorial grin on her face and said, “I have a surprise. Come outside.” My first aching thought was that it would be my friends, standing on our threadbare lawn, telling me that they’d been kidding—of course I was invited to the holiday house. In fact, they’d all been fighting over who’d get to share a room with me, because I was so incredibly wanted.
Outside, there was no one on the lawn. Just my father’s truck pulled up in the driveway and Dad’s hulking figure playing around with something in the backseat. My brother Fraser came to stand beside me, rubbing his eyes and asking, “where’s this surprise, then?” If he could have chosen anything, I wonder what it would have been. Back then, I would have guessed something superficial, like a motorbike or the girl he had a crush on at swim club. But now I know that men—even seventeen-year-olds—are more intricate than that, and that maybe Fraser, too, longed for validation.
Dad closed the door of the truck. The next minute, a brown puppy came skidding onto the grass, sniffling and panting and circling Dad’s legs—a small cyclone of energy and curiosity.
“This is Sid,” said Dad, trying not to trip. “They named him after Sidney Crosby because they’re big hockey fans. But he’s ours now.”
Sid was in my arms the moment I crouched down. His downy fur felt like my favourite velvet crop top, and his puppy breath smelled of apricots and milk. In that moment, all thoughts of the holiday house faded away—I knew that dog would be the centre of my summer instead.
My rental apartment doesn’t allow pets, but my landlady is okay with me dog-sitting on occasion. I’m on a regular rotation of sitters for my friend who has a Goldendoodle, which is a designer breed that looks like the stuffed bears I pretended I didn’t still have at fifteen. Her name is Honey and she’s a sweet girl, though not as shrewd as Sid is. Was. Our boy died peacefully last year, at twelve years old. Apparently mixed breeds, like him, live on average longer than purebreds, but there’s no point getting caught up in statistics like that. You can fit an entire lifetime into a single day with a dog. It doesn’t matter if it’s twelve years or twelve months—time is different when it comes to that kind of love.
Normally, my friend messages me first asking for my availability to look after Honey, but this time, I do it the other way around. In hindsight, it’s a bad idea, because my raw heart feels rejected by a fucking dog when my friend says that sorry, she’s not actually going away any time soon, so she doesn’t need a dog-sitter. She does offer for the three of us to go for a walk together instead, but I don’t feel ready to talk to a human yet. I’ve just had a yearning lately for soft ears and a wet nose, a creature who wants me around.
Two weeks go by. The phrase ‘no contact’ has always made me think of sports. I’ve never actually played a contact sport before, preferring tennis and swimming. I got into watching hockey for a bit when I was a teenager, after we got Sid. I thought I should know more about his namesake—Sidney Crosby, who played and still plays for the Pittsburgh Penguins. When I first met Aaron, I tried to talk to him about hockey, thinking that was the kind of thing he’d like to talk about. Instead, it visibly bothered him whenever I brought it up, and I didn’t understand why until later.
‘No contact’ has other meanings, too. In some therapy circles, they title-case it—No Contact—to emphasise the heaviness of the action, the commitment. That disturbed me at first, because it felt too much like a formal strategy applied in rehabilitation or similar. I didn’t realise that was the point.
On day sixteen, I find the flyer on the bulletin board outside the supermarket. At first, I think it’s an advertisement for an animal rescue centre or a dog-walking service, given that it’s plastered with images of dogs. I look closer at it for inspiration, wondering why I haven’t thought of starting a dog-walking service myself before now. That’s when I understand that it’s advertising something else. I pull gently on one of the paper tabs, as if testing it out. If it doesn’t break, I won’t call. But it does break, and I do call.
I catch the early ferry over and settle on the outer deck, sipping tea cooled by morning air, surrounded by wide-eyed tourists. I guess I’m a tourist, too—I haven’t been to the island since I was a child. I try to see things the way they do, the way I would have back then. That state of being feels closer than it has in a while, but I still can’t resurrect that old brightness I’m meant to have in me. A gust of wind whips across the deck and for a moment, I feel angry. I am angry that I’ve had that spark snatched from me the way the wind looks ready to snatch that lady’s sunhat. She places her hand on her head before the hat escapes, and I wish that I’d had better reflexes, too.
But this is new, I realise. I haven’t felt angry before now. I sit with this feeling inside me, and it keeps me warm against the wind.
The owner of Dogwood House is a woman named Billie. I’ve been corresponding with her for several weeks now, coordinating my placement, but I realise I have no idea what she looks like. There are a series of cars waiting at the ferry terminal, and any one of them could be hers. I scan the traffic until I see an ash-haired woman in her fifties leaning against an old blue truck with three dogs in the back. If the dogs didn’t give it away, the fact that the woman waves at me does. I don’t know how she knows who I am, but maybe it’s obvious—that lost look, like a stray.
Billie has a smoker’s voice and a gruff exterior that somehow makes me calm. Like many sweet things, I suspect she’s full of softness under that shell. Dogs are empathetic creatures and don’t tug at their restraints, whining for you like that, unless you’re a good soul. The three dogs in the back vying for Billie’s attention are all mixed breeds, and Billie introduces them to me in size order—the largest is Helki, a German Shepherd mix; then there’s Bob, a black mutt; and Evelyn, a wiry white thing. Billie explains that she rotates who she brings on trips to keep it fair, because they all love car rides. I wish I could ride in the back with them, but Billie holds open the passenger side door instead.
As the truck rattles down the unkempt island road, Billie points out landmarks in her clipped tone. There’s the little organic grocery store and the football field that hosts the Saturday markets, the newly renovated library, and the silver shed that island artists use as a collective studio.
“How long have you lived here?” I ask.
“On the island, twenty years. Ten at the House. And I’ve been running the retreat for seven.”
“Do you get a lot of business?”
Billie shoots me a glance.
“It’s not business,” she answers. “The weekly fee is only to cover the bills. I didn’t even want to put those flyers around to advertise—one of my long-term lodgers did it for me.”
“Well,” I say. “I’m glad they did.”
“See how covered in dog fur you are by the end of the week, then you can say that.”
“I wore my oldest clothes especially,” I reply.
Billie’s lips tug at the corners. Outside the truck’s windows, fruit trees twinkle with last night’s rain. There’s a quiet that cups the island like a warm hand.
We eventually pull into a long driveway barricaded by a tall gate. As Billie hops out of the truck to open the gate, I spot a wooden sign on the mailbox hand-painted with small flowers I recognise as Pacific Dogwoods—white petals around a yellow centre, like clusters of stars. I read about them when I was researching the House. Like many blooms, they’re symbol of life after a long winter. But as fitting as that is, the House isn’t named after the flowers.
I hear the barking as soon as the truck rolls past the gate—a chorus of howls and yelps and bays that cut through the still air, concurrently wild and soothing. As we round a bend in the driveway, the tattered front lawn of Dogwood House comes into view. And lined up on the lawn, like patient sentinels, are the dogs.
They’re a motley crew. All of them are rescues, and most of them—like Helki, Bob and Evelyn—are indeterminate breeds. There are ink-black dogs and butter-gold dogs, tall dogs and squat dogs, dogs with shaggy coats and dogs with buzz-cuts. At least one of them is missing a leg. Not all of them come over to greet us in the truck. Some of them run around the back of the house, fearful of noises and strangers.
The house itself is a modest brown A-frame with a few patchwork extensions. Behind the house is a strip of tangled forest, through which the grey ocean peeks.
“Here, Kio will help you with your things,” says Billie.
I hadn’t noticed the guy approaching the truck until now. He’s around my age, tall and tan and haunted-looking, reminiscent of a sun stuck behind a persistent cloud. The dogs in the back of the truck go wild for him, and he presses his face to each of theirs before releasing them. They join the fray, and I step out to join it, too.
“Be careful,” Kio advises me.
A wet snout presses into my hand, and a warm body knocks me from behind, but I stay steady on my feet. Kio takes my bag, even though I’m perfectly capable. Billie gathers sacks of groceries from the back—she must have gone shopping before collecting me. They both navigate the sea of dogs with precision, clearly experienced swimmers.
“It’s a zoo here,” Kio tells me, as we head to the house. “I hope you weren’t hoping for a sanctuary.”
“It can be both,” says Billie.
There are few rules at Dogwood House. Everyone pitches in to help with dinner and breakfast, though lunch and snacks are a help yourself arrangement. No candles in the bedrooms, after an incident last winter. No uninvited guests. Ask Billie if she needs help with other chores, but you’re not obliged if you don’t feel like it. Be kind to the dogs, but ignore the begging—they have a feeding schedule.
The humans at the House are a motley crew alongside the mutts, and I’m not exactly sure how many of us there are, even as the sun sets on my first day. There’s a teenager with a broken arm, a woman in her fifties named Helen who might be Billie’s partner, another very quiet lady, an old couple whose names I forget, and potentially one other who stays in their room. Plus Kio, who I remember.
Dinner is local fish, salad from a neighbour’s garden, roast potatoes, and plenty of seeded bread from the island bakery. There’s even wine, which surprises me. But then again, this isn’t rehab. There are no group therapy sessions, no set schedule for us. This is just a house with too many dogs and space for anyone who needs it.
My room is at the back of the house, close to the forest’s edge. I can hear night-birds in the trees, the susurration of the ocean, various canine noises as the dogs settle down for the evening. Helki, the large German Shepherd mix, has joined me in the room, which Billie warned she might. I fall asleep with the weight and warmth of her at my feet. I dream of nothing and wake with the sun.
The ensuing days are spent in a steady rhythm of non-rhythm. I can do whatever I feel like here, with no one to criticise me. But rather than being alone, I gravitate towards company. I take the dogs for a walk along the beach with Kio and the old couple, where we toss bits of gnarled driftwood into the water for them to retrieve. There are seals in the bay, who keep a wary yet curious distance from the clumsy land-beasts that clearly trust humans too much for their own good. I help Billie around the house, pulling weeds, preparing dinners, and laundering blankets that always have dog hair on them no matter how many times they’re put through the machine. Helki sleeps in my bed every night. She’s a heftier dog than Sid or Honey, but her presence grounds me in much the same way, rooting me to the earth beneath the floorboards.
I feel protected, but not possessed. Seen, but not scrutinised.
On my fourth night, I curl up on the loveseat outside on the porch, tossing a matted plush toy for Evelyn and another retriever crossbreed named Lemon. The Pittsburgh Penguins have made it to the Stanley Cup playoffs, and although I haven’t watched hockey in months, I pull the game up on my phone and listen to it in the background while Evelyn and Lemon play-fight over the toy.
The screen door opens and Kio steps out. He sits at the other end of loveseat, with plenty of space between us.
“Who’s winning?” he asks, nodding at my phone.
“Pittsburgh’s up 3-1 in the second. But they’re normally bad at protecting a lead.”
“Has Crosby recovered from his injury?”
“Yeah, he’s back in.”
I move my phone to the centre of the seat so that Kio can watch the game too. We take it in turns tossing the toy for Evelyn and Lemon, and we both softly swear when the Penguins lose the lead, as predicted, and the New York Rangers win in overtime.
I realise then that my fingers have been tensed on the side of the bench the whole time. And it’s not because I’ve been worried about the score.
“You only watch hockey because you think it will impress people, don’t you?”
The accusation came one night when we were out a bar, waiting to meet some friends for a birthday. Aaron had been in a mood, so I’d turned my attention to the game playing on the big screen instead. I’d made a comment about the game, trying to force conversation, trying to coax an increasingly rare smile onto his face. And that had been his response.
“It’s just another one of those things you do,” he’d continued. “Like the clothes you wear and the jokes you make. Like, you know it’s going to get you attention.”
I should have known myself well enough to argue that I’m not an attention-seeker and never have been. If I were more of that disposition, maybe I would have been invited to the holiday house with my friends when I was fifteen. Maybe I would have found more comfort in humans than animals. I should have known myself. I should have known that the only man I’d watch hockey for was a silky-eared one named Sid, who was inching towards the end of his life back home with my parents, where I wished I was in that moment, rather than in the bar with Aaron.
I should have known all these things, but instead, I’d apologised and turned my back to the game.
We never talk about what brought us to Dogwood House. That’s not one of the scant rules, but it feels like something unspoken. In simple terms, we’re all here because, for a little while, we need to spend time in the company of dogs rather than in the outside world. That’s all the flyer with the paper tabs outside the supermarket said, but I read something more in it, something else unspoken.
Some would argue that dogs don’t actually need us. There have been stories of domesticated dogs lost in the wilderness for months that competently fend for themselves. They’re descended from wolves, after all. They have innate hunting abilities—displayed in the way Evelyn likes to shake that matted toy by its neck until it dies a dozen imaginary deaths. They have fur to protect them from the elements, and an intense sense of smell and hearing. Sometimes Helki’s ears prick up at night from the foot of my bed, listening for something in the distance, maybe even something not of this world.
But it’s better to know that that they don’t need us. It means that they want us instead. And it’s okay to feel wanted. Call that attention-seeking if you must. As I lay in my bed that night, after watching the game with Kio, I realise I don’t care that much anymore. I suddenly feel so light that I might float up and out of the bed, if not for the weight of Helki’s paw resting on my ankle.
On Saturday, the day before I’m due to leave, we all head to the markets with a couple of the dogs that are better around crowds. We eat honey doughnuts and sip coffee brewed from freshly roasted beans, while Billie and Helen chat to fellow locals. The girl with the broken arm gets an artist at one of the stalls to decorate her cast with an arrangement of bright flowers. The old couple smile at the children playing in the nearby fields. The quiet lady speaks to a man at a jewellery stand for longer than I’ve heard her speak before. Kio buys two small ceramic dishes from a local potter that depict an island sunset. He hands me one and keeps the other for himself.
“What’s this for?” I ask.
“I think it’s just to hold your things,” he replies.
But the smooth hollow of the dish seems to hold more than that. I see the sun in Kio’s eyes properly today, cleared of the clouds.
Have you ever noticed how people who’d normally pass each other silently in the street or sit solitary at cafés will have no problem talking to strangers about dogs? What’s the breed? How long have you had her for? What a good boy. In these sweet wild creatures, we find connection not only with ourselves, but with each other. In a strange kind of way, it’s the same with sport. Who’s winning? That was a dirty hit, wasn’t it? And the weather. You can feel summer in the air now, can’t you? Glad those clouds have disappeared.
We have a barbecue dinner in the backyard that night, using produce selected from the market. There’s a crooked marquee erected in a clearing in the forest, and as we sit around the plastic table, I notice that we’re outnumbered two to one by the dogs. Foil packages are passed around filled with sausages and bright corncobs. Billie gets happy off three craft beers and shares stories of how each dog has come to be here. Evelyn used to live with an old woman who died of cancer. Bob once roamed a junkyard. Lemon was abandoned at a vet’s clinic. More than once, Billie has woken to find a dog tied to the mailbox under the painted Pacific Dogwoods, like a baby left abandoned on church steps.
Also warmed by craft beer, I find myself talking quietly to Helen at the corner of the table about the concept of No Contact. Helen is a beautifully confident kind of person who I’m certain wouldn’t give someone like Aaron the time of day in the first place, let along need to devise a title-case formatted promise to herself to never speak to him again. But Helen understands. She tells me she used to be with a woman who forbade her from wearing a bikini in public. They were together for five years.
“All that wasted youth,” Helen murmurs.
“You’re never too old to wear a bikini,” I tell her.
The outlines of the party have become blurred, so I don’t think anyone notices when Helen and I sneak off to change into our swimsuits and head down to the beach for a moonlit swim. Helki follows us and paces the edge of the water, our constant guardian, as we wade into the shallows. It’s too cold to go in any deeper, but this is enough. We bare our skin and our teeth to the moon, with no one around to pay attention to us.
A week is the recommended length of stay at Dogwood House. Any longer than that, and you might end up staying forever. Most of us are leaving on the morning ferry, and there’ll be newcomers on Monday. The dogs are agitated as bags are packed and sheets are stripped. I get my crying over and done with early on, while Helki is still in bed with me. It feels nourishing to cry about leaving behind something good, rather than something bad.
Kio isn’t leaving. Not yet. Though every day, he’s getting closer. I’ve been so afraid for too long of voicing what I want, but it’s easy for me to tell him he should come visit me on the mainland. He promises he will and puts his name in my phone as a New Contact.
Within our first week of having Sid as a puppy, he got his head and torso stuck in a bucket and bit his own paw more than once. He was a cyclone for an entire year before he settled into more regular weather patterns, becoming the steadiest fixture in our family throughout the seasons of our lives—as my brother left home, as I left home, as my brother returned with his new wife and their baby daughter, as they left again.
It’s been a while since I’ve been home. The last time I had plans to visit my family, Aaron surprised me with a weekend trip to the mountains, completely out of the blue. I’d thought it was romantic at the time. Now I understand that he didn’t want me around people who knew me. Because maybe then I’d start to know myself again.
They don’t call it puppy love because it’s sweet. They call it puppy love because it’s temporary and chaotic. Real love should settle and stay, like a warm weight at the end of your bed at night. Real love should grow up with you.
On the ferry back, I make plans to visit my family next weekend. I make plans to go for a walk with my friend and Honey the Goldendoodle. I strike up a conversation with a stranger who’s wearing a New York Rangers hat. It’s a calm day out on the water, with no wind and no clouds. Nothing to hold us back.