If you are in a place, #13: Dogs in Food

Spaghetti and Pupballs

If you’re in a place, check out this ridiculous Instagram page called Dogs in Food.

That’s all it is really. Dogs playfully photoshopped into different, delicious foods.

I was born into a dog family. Before my parents ever thought to have me, they first adopted Winkles. That isn’t a typo. Winkles, not Wrinkles.

He was more my older siblings’ dog than mine, a Dachshund/Bassett Hound mix with long ears and soft black fur with brown spots. He was a backyard dog, but he wasn’t very good at it. On a weekly basis, he would figure out the gate or sneak through someone’s legs and bolt down Almadale Avenue.

We would chase him around our little neighborhood in El Sereno with a slice of loose Oscar Mayer bologna, the same bologna my dad would cut into squares and fry into eggs every Saturday morning.

I was four years old. And I never worried Winkles wouldn’t come back. Winkles always came home.

That’s the lovely thing about dogs. They are constants. They love us when we’re depressed. Scatterbrained. Drunk. Late to the party. Not in the mood to hang out. When we haven’t cleaned the house in fifteen days because we can’t collect the energy necessary to do so. They love us when we haven’t exercised recently. Or when we want to indulge in fast food. They love us when we get home after a long day where no one seemed to love us. They love us when we have a hard time loving ourselves.

Through it all, they paw our knees and ask to be scratched behind the ear. Through it all.

And that’s why pictures of dogs are such an instant mood booster. They remind us of how well we can love. They remind us, too, how unconditionally we can be loved.