My Dog Is My Child Quotes & Sayings

People have been trying to understand dogs ever since the beginning of time. One never knows what they'll do. You can read every day where a dog saved the life of a drowning child, or lay down his life for his master. Some people call this loyalty. I don't. I may be wrong, but I call it love - the deepest kind of love. . . . It's a shame that people all over the world can't have that kind of love in their hearts. . . . There would be no wars, slaughter, or murder; no greed or selfishness. It would be the kind of world that God wants us to have - a wonderful world. - Wilson Rawls, Where the Red Fern Grows — Rebecca Frankel

The prescription for spiritual transformation has often been too individualistically oriented. We are encouraged to engage in spiritual disciplines so that we might have the power to do what we can't do by will power alone. But what happens when people don't have the "will power" to engage spiritual disciples on a consistent basis? Our character is left untended. "In a wild world like ours, your character, left untended, will become a stale room, an obnoxious child, a vacant lot filled with thorns, weeds, broken bottles, raggedy grocery bags, and dog droppings. Your deepest channels will silt in, and you will feel yourself shallowing. You'll become a presence neither you nor others will enjoy, and you and they will spend more and more time and energy trying to be anywhere else."[1] So what are we to do? — J.R. Woodward

There is a movie called 'My Dog Skip,' starring my 'Outsiders' costar Diane Lane. I do not recommend it. If you have a child, particularly one about to leave home, watching this film is to be emotionally waterboarded. — Rob Lowe

But he wouldna do it. John." He looked up then, and gave me a crooked smile. "He loved me, he said. And if I couldna give him that in return - and he kent I couldn't - then he'd not take counterfeit for true coin." He shook himself, hard, like a dog coming out of the water. "No. A man who would say such a thing is not one who'd bugger a child for the sake of his father's bonny blue eyes, I'll tell ye that for certain, Sassenach. — Diana Gabaldon

If you treat your feelings with as much love as you treat your dog or your cat or your child you'll feel as if you were living in heaven. — Geneen Roth

In choosing, moreover, for his father an amiable man of fifty-two, who had already lost an only son, and for his mother a woman of thirty-eight, whose first and only child he was, little Jon had done well and wisely. What had saved him from becoming a cross between a lap dog and a little prig, had been his father's adoration of his mother, for even little Jon could see that she was not merely just his mother, and that he played second fiddle to her in his father's heart: What he played in his mother's heart he knew not yet. — John Galsworthy

Even if only the people in your writing group read your memoirs or stories or novel, even if you only wrote your story so that one day your children would know what life was like when you were a child and you knew the name of every dog in town - still, to have written your version is an honorable thing to have done. — Anne Lamott

In the night, I've shrunk and everyone else on the island has grown. They're all nine feet tall and men and I'm four feet and a child. Dove, too, is a toy or possibly a dog as I lead her through the throngs of people. — Maggie Stiefvater

I feel that my tendency to acquire books is rather like someone smoking two packs a day: it's a terrible vice that I wish I could shuck. I love my books, and with all their dog-ears and underlinings they are irreplaceable; but I sometimes wish they'd just vanish. ~ Claire Messud, author of The Emperor's Child. — Leah Price

Meditation expands our inner being. The inner being is like a small, individual river flowering towards the Ocean.
In meditation, I feel how my inner being expands into an inner ocean, which is part of everything, which is one with Existence.
Through the inner being, we come in contact with the inner ocean, the undefined and boundless within ourselves, where we are one with life. We realize that God is part of life. We realize that God is not a person, but the consciousness that is part of everything. We find God in a flower, in a tree, in the eyes of a child or in a playful dog.
Through discovering our inner being, we discover that we are also part of the flower, the child or the dog. We realize that God is everywhere. — Swami Dhyan Giten

It pleases him how Spell is how the word is made but also, in the hands of the magician, how the world is changed. One letter separates Word from World, and that letter is like the number one, or an 'I', or a shaft of light between almost closed curtains. There is an old letter called a thorn, which jags and tears at the throat as it's uttered. Later he learns that Grammar and Glamour share the same deeper root, which is further magic, and there can be neither magic without that root, nor plant. He's lost in it like Chid in Child, or God reversed into Dog. Somewhere inside him is a colon. A sentence can last for life. — Charles Lambert

I supply my own angels and demons. I exist on a stony beach, which lowers itself in waves toward a protective ocean. A dog barks; a child cries; the day sinks and becomes night. You can never scare me. No human being will be able to scare me ever again. I have a prayer that I repeat to myself in absolute stillness: May a wind come to stir up the ocean and the stifling twilight. May a bird come from water out there and explode the silence with its call. — Ingmar Bergman

The congregation just sat or stood on the sidelines watching the splendor of it but without, as far as my experience went anyway, having any very satisfactory part in it. I felt like a child with his nose pressed to a bakery shop window - impressed by what I saw but a little lonely and unnourished. The sermon, on the other hand, was one that I will long remember. It was preached by a huge monk in cloth of gold, and his point was that there are many people in this world who do not realize how impoverished they are spiritually. "Even a dog knows when it is uncomfortable" was a phrase he used, but we whose spiritual discomfort is apt to be so profound are in many cases entirely unaware of it. — Frederick Buechner

I have a dog at home, and that's my baby. She's my girl, and I would do absolutely anything for her. She's like a child to me. — Michael Graziadei

Sometimes such simple acts, which could not be rushed and took up a fixed amount of necessary time, were a respite from more lasting uncertainties and preoccupations. If he could concentrate more upon such manageable tasks (making this cocoa, looking after his wife, feeding his child, or teaching his dog to fetch a ball) then ideas, and even solutions, might come unbidden; thoughts that could make him a better priest, a kinder husband, — James Runcie

People often write me and ask how I keep my wood floors so clean when I live with a child and a dog, and my answer is that I use a technique called Suffering From a Mental Illness. — Heather Armstrong

Into the main part of the store. Off to get Kendal, I mouthed to Celine, and she nodded. I stepped out into the September afternoon. Behind me, Eighty-ninth Street stretched several blocks to Riverside Park, a favorite place of mine and Kendal's. Just ahead the intersection at Broadway sparkled with a steady stream of cars and our neighboring retailers' windows. A man walking his dog nodded a wordless hello, and a mom with a baby in a stroller bent to pop a pacifier back into her unhappy child's mouth. A delivery truck double-parked and the car behind it honked its disproval. The air held only a hint that summer was waning. September used to be my favorite month. I liked the way it sweetly bade the summer pastels away and showered the Yard's shelves with auburn, mocha, and every shade of red. September brought in the serious quilters, those who loved spending — Susan Meissner

People always ask, Why does God allow suffering? Why does He allow a child to be beaten? A woman to cry? A holocaust to happen? A good dog to die painfully? Simple truth is, He wants to see for Himself what we'll do. He's stood up the candle, put the devil at the wick, and now He wants to see if we blow it out or let it burn down. God is suffering's biggest spectator. — Tiffany McDaniel

He's so kindhearted no dog has ever barked at him. No child has ever cried in front of him. No bee has ever tried to sting him. — Alice Hoffman

One can't run in a park without a dog or make angels in the snow without a child and there are things one can't do without a lover, so the loss of the lover is like an amputation and the patient goes into shock. — Merle Shain

And then came the pain. First in her leg, as if something had sunk its teeth into it. A huge beast, a dog, maybe. It locked its jaws onto her limb and tore at the muscles with its teeth. She screamed, that was all she could do, scream. She could not describe the feeling of having her body ripped apart. She remembered her father's despair, his face as he leaned over her bed, and his words: What is it, tell me, what is it? As she writhed in pain, soaked in her own sweat, Don Guillermo, her kind, good father, waited for her to tell him. For an explanation. A meaningful verbalization of this horror, so that he could understand what was happening to his child. Otherwise, how could he help her? Because her frenzied cries were not enough. Pain needs to be articulated, communicated. It needs a kind of dialogue. It needs words. But only screams and shrieks of pain escaped from the child's lips. — Slavenka Drakulic

He remembered a dog - the only living thing they found in the entire village - curled around the body of a dead child. Caramon stopped to pet the small dog. The animal cringed, then licked the big man's hand. It then licked the child's cold face, looking up at the warrior hopefully, expecting this human to make everything all right, to make his little playmate run and laugh again. — Tracy Hickman

In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality ... — Rick Santorum

I would feel no hesitation in saying that it is the responsibility of a decent human being to give assistance to a child who is being attacked by a rabid dog, but I would not intend this to imply that in all imaginable circumstances one must, necessarily, act in accordance with this general responsibility. — Noam Chomsky

Owners who buy aggressive dogs for security may be kidding themselves: The chances that the victim of a fatal dog attack will be a burglar or human attacker are 1-in-177. The odds that the victim will be a child are 7-in-10. — Jon Katz

Going back to the missed-disco opportunities or forgone pleasures argument, this would be entirely valid if we were discussing the reasons I've never had a dog. Whereas it's never even occurred to me to have a child, I would love to have a dog but am put off by the burden of responsibility involved. And while not having a child is a source of pleasure, not having a dog is a source of constant torment and endless anxiety for my wife and me. We keep wishing that we could arrange our lives in such a way that it was possible to have a dog, but we keep coming up empty-handed, empty-pawed. — Meghan Daum

This is what music is to me. I can't see it. But it's everywhere. It's in the traffic when I'm downtown. It's in the humming of a furnace as it fights to keep your house warm. It's in the jingle of a dog's collar as he prances into a room with his favorite toy. And it's in the laughter of a child as she plays with her toys. It's everywhere. And although I can't see it, I feel it throughout my body. And all I want to do is make more music. — Jeremy Asher

The adult must seem to mislead the child, and the Master the dog. They misread the signs. Their ignorance and their wishes twist everything. You are so sure you know what the promise promised! And the danger is that when what He means by 'wind' appears you will ignore it because it is not what you thought it would be - as He Himself was rejected because He was not like the Messiah the Jews had in mind. — Sheldon Vanauken

So much of what a pet is about for us is that it becomes a vessel for yearnings, dreams, illusions, hopes and so forth. It's a projection of the ultimate innocence and purity. That's why it's hard to see a dog in its dogness. That's why, when some harm comes to a dog, it's much harder for an audience to deal with that, more so than dealing with harm that comes to a child or anything human. — Todd Solondz

This is our goal as writers, I think; to help others have this sense of
please forgive me
wonder, of seeing things anew, things that can catch us off guard, that break in on our small, bordered worlds. When this happens, everything feels more spacious. Try walking around with a child who's going, "Wow, wow! Look at that dirty dog! Look at that burned-down house! Look at that red sky!" And the child points and you look, and you see, and you start going, "Wow! Look at that huge crazy hedge! Look at that teeny little baby! Look at the scary dark cloud!" I think this is how we are supposed to be in the world
present and in awe. — Anne Lamott

Slow me down, Lord. Ease the pounding of my heart by the quieting of my mind. Steady my hurried pace with a vision of the eternal reach of time. Give me, amid the confusion of the day, the calmness of the everlasting hills. Break the tensions of my nerves and muscles with the soothing music of the singing streams that live in my memory. Teach me the art of taking minute vacations - of slowing down to look at a flower, to chat with a friend, to pat a dog, to smile at a child, to read a few lines from a good book. Slow me down, Lord, and inspire me to send my roots deep into the soil of life's enduring values, that I may grow toward my greater destiny. Remind me each day that the race is not always to the swift; that there is more to life than increasing its speed. Let me look upward to the towering oak and know that it grew great and strong because it grew slowly and well. — Chip Ingram

Stephen Hawking ... found it tantalizing that we could not remember the future. But remembering the future is child's play for me now. I know what will become of my helpless, trusting babies because they are grown-ups now. I know how my closest friends will end up because so many of them are retired or dead now ... To Stephen Hawking and all others younger than myself I say, 'Be patient. Your future will come to you and lie down at your feet like a dog who knows and loves you no matter what you are. — Kurt Vonnegut

You would think no harm in a child's caressing a large dog, even if he was black; but a creature that can think, and reason, and feel, and is immortal, you shudder at; confess it, cousin. I know the feeling among some of you northerners well enough. Not that there is a particle of virtue in our not having it; but custom with us does what Christianity ought to do, - obliterates the feeling of personal prejudice. I have often noticed, in my travels north, how much stronger this was with you than with us. You loathe them as you would a snake or a toad, yet you are indignant at their wrongs. You would not have them abused; but you don't want to have anything to do with them yourselves. You would send them to Africa, out of your sight and smell, and then send a missionary or two to do up all the self-denial of elevating them compendiously. Isn't that it?" "Well, cousin," said Miss Ophelia, thoughtfully, "there may be some truth in this. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Love is a leap of faith. There are no guarantees. Whether it's a lover or a child or a dog, you love because you have no choice. So figure out what you want, — Wendy Tyson

An awful lot of people have childhood memories of holidays in Cornwall, and the holidays are old-fashioned and hugely successful. You stick a child and a dog on one of the beaches, and they just light up; they just love it. — Martin Clunes

Without even thinking about it, I sent Callum an image of a dog hiking his leg at a fire hydrant. And then one of a rebel flag from the Revolutionary War.
Callum didn't respond in my head, but I knew he'd gotten the message, because he met me at the front door, and the first thing he said, with a single arch of his eyebrow, was, "Don't tread on you?"
"More like 'don't metaphorically pee on my brainwaves,' but it's the same sentiment, really."
"Vulgarity does not become you, Bryn."
"Are you going to lecture, or are we going to run?"
He sighed, but I didn't need a bond with the pack to see that he was thinking that I had always, always been a difficult child. And then, just in case that point wasn't clear, he verbalized it. "You have always, always been a difficult child."
I smiled sweetly. "I try. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Oh! to be a child again. My only treasures, bits of shell and stone and glass. To love nothing but maple sugar. To fear nothing but a big dog. To go to sleep without dreading the morrow. To wake up with a shout. Not to have seen a dead face. Not to dread a living one. To be able to believe. — Fanny Fern

That night, [Black Dog] lay beside Henry, and he stroked her sharp shoulder blades and scratched behind her ears. He did this late into the night as he listened to the low and terrible moans that swept through the hallways of the house and that were not from the lonely wind but from his lonely mother, who had lost her oldest child and would never have him back again. — Gary D. Schmidt

Many who have dedicated their life to love, can tell us less about this subject than a child who lost his dog yesterday. — Thornton Wilder

We went far down the garden to the farthest end, where the children and the nurse and the puppy and I used to play in the summer in the shade of a great elm, and there the footman dug a hole, and I saw he was going to plant the puppy, and I was glad, because it would grow and come up a fine handsome dog, like Robin Adair, and be a beautiful surprise for the family when they came home; so I tried to help him dig, but my lame leg was no good, being stiff, you know, and you have to have two, or it is no use. When the footman had finished and covered little Robin up, he patted my head, and there were tears in his eyes, and he said: Poor little doggie, you saved HIS child! — Mark Twain

With the utmost love and attention the man who walks must study and observe every smallest living thing, be it a child, a dog, a fly, a butterfly, a sparrow, a worm, a flower, a man, a house, a tree, a hedge, a snail, a mouse, a cloud, a hill, a leaf, or no more than a poor discarded scrap of paper on which, perhaps, a dear good child at school has written his first clumsy letters. The highest and the lowest, the most serious and the most hilarious things are to him equally beloved, beautiful, and valuable. — Robert Walser

I'll never kick dogs, I'll never hurt a child, I'll never slap a woman - three things I won't do on film. — Lee Van Cleef

Phrases and their actual meanings: My teacher has never liked me. Expect a phone call before lunch from the teacher informing you that your child has been launching hot dogs by compressing them inside a small Thermos and then removing the lid quickly. — Erma Bombeck

Men," said Mr. Kyle, "people have been trying to understand dogs ever since the beginning of time. One never knows what they'll do. You can read every day where a dog saved the life of a drowning child, or lay down his life for his master. Some people call this loyalty. I don't. I may be wrong, but I call it love - the deepest kind of love."
After these words were spoken, a thoughtful silence settled over the men. The mood was broken by the deep growling voice I had heard back in the washout.
"It's a shame that people all over the world can't have that kind of love in their hearts," he said. "There would be no wars, slaughter, or murder; no greed or selfishness. It would be the kind of world that God wants us to have - a wonderful world. — Wilson Rawls

The duty of the inn-keeper,is to sell to the first comer, stews, repose, light, fire, dirty
sheets, a servant, lice, and a smile; to stop passers-by, to empty small
purses, and to honestly lighten heavy ones; to shelter travelling families
respectfully: to shave the man, to pluck the woman, to pick the child
clean; to quote the window open, the window shut, the chimney-corner,the arm-chair, the chair, the ottoman, the stool, the feather-bed, the mattress
and the truss of straw; to know how much the shadow uses up the
mirror, and to put a price on it; and, by five hundred thousand devils, to
make the traveller pay for everything, even for the flies which his dog
eats! — Victor Hugo

One of the problems with all of this is that not all narratives are equal. Imagine, to take a silly example, that someone told you story after story extolling the virtues of eating dog shit. You've been told these stories since you were a child. You believe them. You eat dog shit hotdogs, dog shit ice cream, General Tso's dog shit. Sooner or later, if you are exposed to some other foods, you might figure out that dog shit really doesn't taste good. Or if you cling too tightly to these stories (or if your enculturation is so strong that dog shit actually does taste good to you), the diet might make you sick or kill you. To make this example a little less silly, substitute the word pesticides for dog shit. Or, for that matter, substitute Big Mac, Whopper, or Coca Cola. — Derrick Jensen

Nigromanta took him to her room, which was lighted with false candlesticks, to her folding cot with the bedding stained from bad loves, and to her body of a wild dog, hardened and without a soul, which prepared itsself to dismiss him as if he were a frightened child, and suddenly it found a man whose tremendous power demanded a movement of seismic readjustment from her insides. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Becoming a parent is actually terrifying. A lot of people have that feeling about their dogs. And if you're the kind of person who's going to have that feeling about a dog you're definitely going to have that about a child. — Joan Didion

And the City, in its own way, gets down for you, cooperates, smoothing its sidewalks, correcting its curbstones, offering you melons and green apples on the corner. Racks of yellow head scarves; strings of Egyptian beads. Kansas fried chicken and something with raisins call attention to an open window where the aroma seems to lurk. And if that's not enough, doors to speakeasies stand ajar and in that cool dark place a clarinet coughs and clears its throat waiting for the woman to decide on the key. She makes up her mind and as you pass by informs your back that she is daddy's little angel child. The City is smart at this: smelling and good and looking raunchy; sending secret messages disguised as public signs: this way, open here, danger to let colored only single men on sale woman wanted private room stop dog on premises absolutely no money down fresh chicken free delivery fast. And good at opening locks, dimming stairways. Covering your moans with its own. — Toni Morrison

I was an only child. Growing up, we moved a lot, so I didn't have any close friends. So the animals I was around as a child - dogs, cats, and horses, and stuffed animals - became my family and friends. The only strong bonds I made as a child were with animals. — William McNamara

Old paint on a canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. When that happens it is possible, in some pictures, to see the original lines: a tree will show through a woman's dress, a child makes way for a dog, a large boat is no longer on an open sea. That is called pentimento because the painter "repented," changed his mind. Perhaps it would be as well to say that the old conception, replaced by a later choice, is a way of seeing and then seeing again. That is all I mean about the people in this book. The paint has aged and I wanted to see what was there for me once, what is there for me now. — Lillian Hellman

Long past sunset an old blind woman sat on a camp-stool with her back to the stone wall of the Union of London and Smith's Bank, clasping a brown mongrel tight in her arms and singing out loud, not for coppers, no, from the depths of her gay wild heart - her sinful, tanned heart - for the child who fetches her is the fruit of sin, and should have been in bed, curtained, asleep, instead of hearing in the lamplight her mother's wild song, where she sits against the Bank, singing not for coppers, with her dog against her breast. — Virginia Woolf

I could scream down 90 mountains
to less than dust
if only one living human had eyes in the head
and heart in the body,
but there is no chance,
my god,
no chance.
rat with rat dog with dog hog with hog,
play the piano drunk
listen to the drunk piano,
realize the myth of mercy
stand still
as even a child's voice snarls
and we have not been fooled,
it was only that we wanted to believe. — Charles Bukowski

When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and he says he's doing nothing but the dog is barking, call 911. — Erma Bombeck

I remember the pain I felt, and wonder why a man who was such an accomplished liar had to tell the truth that day. — Toni Maguire

Winter again. The summer people have gone. The early morning walks are solitary once more. Fog wraps the ocean and sky like a wet, gray glove. Sprinting through the frosty dune grass, my dog Buddy emerges soaked and grinning. He's become a man-child, his boundless puppy love and mindless exuberance caroming off the walls in a muscular body. He lives by one rule: To be alive is to be gloriously happy. Not a bad way to be, I often remind myself.

Comfortable in the ebb and flow of each other's idiosyncracies and needs, he keeps me company while I work, I join him often in his play. His unflagging high spirits urge me to cram activity and joy into every waking moment as he does. By so doing, I tell myself, I will multiply my allotted time by dog years and dilate the remaining seasons accordingly. A good way to look at life, I figure. — Lionel Fisher

A child who had been introduced to misery in Saudi Arabia, a teenager who went to wage jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, a deeply devout Muslim who had graduated with honors in medicine, a man who had fed a stranger to wild dogs in Damascus, a zealot who had dosed three foreigners with smallpox and watched them die in agony, gave thanks to Allah for the blessings that had been bestowed upon him. — Terry Hayes

Now, while watching these two mini-you's, I want you to see that as dysfunctional as they may be, both of them are essentially good. The Dictator wants you to be healthy and beautiful. It gets frantic about your weight for the same reason you might freak out if you saw a beloved pet wandering into traffic. It screams and yells, pens you in or drags you around - anything to keep you from a horrible fat fate. On the other hand, the Wild Child is the part of you that evolved to avoid starvation and captivity. It panics when the Dictator berates, shames, and tries to control it. It knows the Dictator is planning to starve it. So it's not surprising that the instant the Dictator is weakened by stress, hunger, or environmental chaos, the Wild Child leaps into action and eats like a junkyard dog. — Martha N. Beck