Mid-morning nap after too much activity, too early in the morning, sending Le Ben off for the holidays…

Pure blood Wagyu beef ribeyes from Bryan Flannery.

Triple Berry Shortcake from Sweet Lady Jane. Chihuahua from out of nowhere.

Working on a little craft project for the garden…

She was waiting on the couch by the window, waiting…

We got back from an almost-three-weeks trip to the East Coast this past weekend. During the time we were away, Daisy was shuttled around LA, from a boarding house to my sister’s house with two toddler children, to my parent’s house, which they keep at a chihuahua-unfriendly 68 degrees.

But more on all that later.

For now, I’m just wondering if during that time, Daisy missed us the way we (more specifically, he) missed her. Dogs have emotions, but do they experience “miss?”

It’s hard to explain what “missing” is or feels like, even to myself, as occasionally I’ll stop for a moment in the endless race that is my thoughts and feel a strange sense of “missing,” though without an object. I don’t who or what it is I miss, but I miss. Weird.

Missing is definitely different from sadness, different from loneliness or boredom. Dogs don’t seem to ever get sad (though I do often wonder if Daisy doesn’t suffer a mild form of doggy-depression), and she was never alone in those three weeks, but did she think about us while we were apart? Did she feel our absence? Did she wonder when, or even if, we were coming back to get her?

It also made me wonder if she ever missed her previous family, the one from which I adopted her.

When I picked her up from my parents’ and brought her home, he came out as soon as I pulled the car into the driveway and pulled Daisy out of the car. He definitely missed Daisy.

So much that he snuggled with her in the bed all morning.

Do you think dogs miss their people?

When she gets like this, it scares me.