A Human and A Dog

Do you believe in fate/destiny?

I used to think destiny was something dramatic.

A lightning strike.

A once-in-a-lifetime love.

A door that opens and rearranges the architecture of your future in a single afternoon.

But if I am honest with myself — destiny has always arrived disguised as a dog.

When I adopted Romo, my Belgian Malinois, I did not think I was stepping into fate. I thought I was adopting a companion. A protector. A creature who needed a home. What I did not understand then was that he was also adopting me — into responsibility, into devotion, into a version of myself that did not flinch from commitment.

Romo did not feel like destiny. He felt like chaos wrapped in muscle and intelligence. He demanded structure. Patience. Financial discipline. Early mornings. Emotional steadiness. He was not ornamental love. He was formative love.

Looking back now, I see something unsettling.

He arrived a few years before Sauli walked into my life.

And Romo trained me.

Not for obedience — but for endurance.

If you had asked me then whether I believed in fate, I would have rolled my eyes. I have always been suspicious of narratives that suggest we are puppets of some invisible script. I believe in agency. In will. In choosing differently.

But here is what I cannot ignore:

Certain beings enter your life at precise thresholds.

Romo came before a season of deep emotional transformation. Before rupture. Before the kind of love that rearranges your nervous system. He anchored me into my body. Into consistency. Into caretaking. He taught me that love is not fantasy — it is logistics. It is showing up every day whether you are tired, heartbroken, or lost.

If destiny exists, I do not think it looks like prophecy.

I think it looks like preparation.

Perhaps fate is not about meeting the “right” person at the “right” time. Perhaps it is about becoming the version of yourself capable of surviving what is about to unfold.

Romo prepared my nervous system for intensity. For loyalty that does not waver. For loving something that might not love you back in the language you expect — but loves you in action, in presence, in breath.

And when Sauli entered my life later, I was not the same woman.

I had already practiced devotion.

I had already learned that love can be both grounding and wild. Protective and demanding. Gentle and fierce.

Do I believe in destiny?

Not in the cinematic way.

I believe in convergences.

In timing that feels almost architectural.

In the way certain souls — human or animal — intercept your life exactly when your interior scaffolding is being built.

Romo was not an accident.

Neither was Sauli.

And neither were the detours, the heartbreaks, the migrations between cities and selves.

If there is destiny, it is not controlling me.

It is collaborating with me.

It is placing teachers in my path — sometimes with four legs — and watching whether I am willing to learn.

And I have learned this much:

Fate is not about being chosen.

It is about being shaped.