Sixth Sense.

This post is dedicated to Maggie and PM, her owner. Had I not met Maggie, I might never have taken the dog-adoption plunge. And I am very, very glad I did.

Two weeks ago, I did something I’d been wanting to do for a long time: I adopted a pet. My baby is a shih-poo, a shih-tzu-poodle mix. (Although, my best friend’s husband suggested that he be called a poo-zu, which I find much more entertaining.) Peabody is all the things that a dog is supposed to be: playful, cuddly, sweet, and totally devoted to me. Never have I had a cuter shadow. I mean, this dog trots from one room to the next, no more than a foot behind me. When I come home, whether I’ve been gone thirty minutes or all day, he can’t contain his excitement. Of the four words I’m trying to teach him, the only one he seems to consistently recognize is “bedtime” which translates to “seven uninterrupted hours of curling up behind Mama’s knees”—his favorite time of day. I’d barely known this animal two hours before I fell in love.

And I’m not the only one: he’s melted the hearts of everyone who’s met him so far. Last weekend my mom and I went on a road trip to see her side of the family. Since it’s a long trip, we stopped several times on the way to let Peabody do his business. At one stop, he walked right over to a homeless man who was sitting on the ledge around the gas station. Peabody stopped in front of him and paused, as if waiting for something. The man reached his hand out and began petting my dog lightly on his head. His eyes filled with tears as he smiled and choked on a chuckle. He said nothing, not to me or to Peabody, but I could tell his day had been made. After a moment, Peabody looked up at me as if to say, “Alright, Mama, we can go now.” As we walked away, I turned to look at the man. He was still grinning and wiping the tears from his eyes.

Call me crazy, but I believe animals can sense more than we give them credit for. I’ve heard several times about dogs that began sleeping at the foot of their mistress’s bed when she got pregnant. Countless stories circulate of dogs showing special devotion to a sick family member. One morning shortly after I adopted Peabody, I was upset, and that dog crawled into my lap and put his head right next to mine—something he hadn’t done before and hasn’t since. I think, in the case of the man at the gas station, Peabody could sense his loneliness and somehow knew he could brighten the man’s day.

John Grogan published Marley and Me several years ago now. I read it and loved it before I was a dog owner, but I found one part kind of silly. Grogan writes that he learned something about love from Marley: “Give a dog your heart, and he’ll give you his. It’s that simple. How many people can you say that about?” To be honest…I don’t find it silly anymore. Having now experienced the canine sixth sense for myself, I too feel like I’m learning from my dog. Would I have gone over and talked to the man at the gas station had I not been dragged there by Peabody? No. And yet the man clearly needed a reason to smile. How was my dog more sensitive to this than I, a fellow human, was? Perhaps Peabody could teach me something about being more perceptive and more willing to be someone’s miracle.

My dog is a genius.