About Paws and People

Who are your favorite people to be around?

My favorite people to be around have never fully been people.

They have been Romo and Sauli.

Romo, my Belgian Malinois, entered my life like a disciplined storm. He did not tolerate half-presence. If I was distracted, he knew. If I was anxious, he mirrored it. If I was weak in my boundaries, he tested them. Being around him required coherence. He sharpened me.

There was something profoundly honest about his company. No small talk. No performance. Just energy meeting energy. When we walked through the city, he moved like he had a mission, and I moved differently beside him — more alert, more grounded. He made me feel capable. Needed. Responsible in a way that felt clean, not burdensome.

Romo was not emotionally dramatic. His love was structural. It lived in routine, in protection, in the weight of his body leaning against my legs after a long day. Around him, I did not have to explain myself. My mood did not require translation. He responded to my nervous system, not my words.

And then there is Sauli.

If Romo was structure, Sauli is softness.

Where Romo demanded discipline, Sauli invites surrender. Her presence feels less like training and more like companionship in the truest sense — a gentle mirroring rather than a sharpening. With her, I am less commander, more co-drifter. There is laughter. There is indulgence. There is an ease that does not need to prove itself.

Sauli does not require me to be strong. She seems content with me being quiet, tired, and contemplative. She curls into the spaces Romo once occupied, but she brings a different frequency — one that feels lighter, almost forgiving.

Being around both of them — in different seasons — revealed something about who I am.

I am most myself when I am needed without being consumed.

I am most at peace when love is wordless.

With humans, there is often negotiation. Expectation. Subtext. History layered upon history. Around Romo and Sauli, love is immediate. It is physical. It is rhythmic. It is in the sound of paws on the floor, in the shared stillness of a room, in the way they look at me as if I am enough without performing competence or charisma.

Romo taught me endurance. Sauli teaches me gentleness.

Romo was intensity and loyalty wrapped in muscle. Sauli is warmth and companionship wrapped in quiet trust.

If you ask me who my favorite people are to be around, I think of early mornings with coffee in hand and a dog resting nearby. I think of silent walks where no conversation is required. I think of grief and healing braided together in fur and breath.

I have loved humans deeply. I have built friendships, navigated romance, crossed continents for connection.

But the purest versions of myself — the most unguarded, the most anchored — have existed in the presence of two beings who never needed language to understand me.

Romo and Sauli.

One taught me how to hold on.

The other teaches me how to soften.

And in loving them, I discovered that sometimes the safest place to rest your becoming is beside a creature who asks nothing of you except that you stay.