Lola Girl.

Fifteen years is a long time to share a life with anyone, even more so with a creature who never speaks your language but somehow knows the exact frequency of your soul. A dog comes into your life as a bundle of chaos; sharp teeth, clumsy paws, the kind of boundless joy that makes you believe maybe love really is that simple. You think you’re teaching them, sit; stay; heal; but really they are teaching you what it is to be loved without condition, to be seen without pretence.

The First years are fast and wild. Their body is all muscle and motion, a constant demand for the park, the ball, the adventure. They are your shadow in the loudest moments of youth, ragging you toward rivers you wouldn’t have stepped into, friendships you wouldn't have made without the tether of a leash pulling you into the world. Their trust in you is absolutely and that responsibility roots you when you might otherwise float away.

Somewhere in the middle years, the bond grows quieter, deeper. Yup stop needing words for comfort. it’s in the way they curl at your feet as you type late into the night, in the steady weight of their head pressed into your palm on the days grief won’t let you rise. They know the cadence of your steps, the sigh in your chest before it breaks, the difference between your laughter with strangers and your laughter when you are truly at peace. They wait at the door like the earth itself is holding its breath until you return.

You measure time by them; holidays marked with their wagging tails, season remembered by the trails you walked, the lovers who came and went but never stayed the way this creature stayed. Fifteen years is not just a measure of life for them; it’s a mirror of your own growing up, your own softening. They watched you stumble into adulthood break your heart on men who could not stay, move houses, move counties, build dreams, tear them down, begin again. Through it all, they were the constant, the familiar heartbeat in the chaos.

And then comes the slow unwinding. The gray creeps across their muzzle like a secret whispered by time. Their movements grow stiff, their eyes softer with the kind of wisdom only creatures who never complicate love an hold. You reaise you have been given an inheritance; years of companionship that has shaped you into someone gentler, someone who knows how to sit still and listen, someone how has learned loyalty from a being who never questioned it.

The tenderness in caring for them as they once cared for you. You lift them gently into car seats, and onto beds instead of them bounding first. You shorten walks, not out of impatience, but out of reverence for the body that has carried you both so far. You learn that love is not only in the vibrant years of play, but also in the quiet devotion of staying close as time folds in.

The end is the part no one prepared you for though you’ve known it was coming all along. it is the sharp edge of grief pressed into the same moment; the unbearable ache of letting go and the fierce beauty of having them at all. You sit with them, hand of fur, whispering all of your thank ours you never said out loud but always felt. For every morning they pulled you into the day. For every night they guarded your sleep. For every season of loneliness they filled with presence. For every version of yourself they accepted without hesitation.

Fifteen years of friendship with a dog is not just about the animals. It is about the human you became because of them. They hold your secrets, your tears, your laughter, your silences. They are stitched into your memories so deep that even long after their paws no longer echo down your hallways, you will still catch yourself turning, expecting to see them waiting.

In the end, it is not their absence you carry, but the way they redefined love for you. Unconditional, steady, Fierce in its simplicity. A friendship written not in words but in shared breath, shared steps, shared years. And in that, they are never truly gone. Fifteen years becomes forever, because love like that does not vanish; it reshapes itself into memory, into legacy, into the quiet reminder that the truest friendships are not bound by language or time, but by the simple act of showing up day after day, tail wagging, heart open.