There’s an old story making the rounds again. You may have seen a version of it. A man dies and reaches the gate of what he believes is heaven. A guard welcomes him in, but stops his dog at the threshold. Dogs, he’s told, aren’t allowed.
So the man turns around. He doesn’t ask for an exception. He doesn’t argue. He just says no thank you, and starts walking back down the long road with his dog beside him, giving up the one thing he thought he’d spent his whole life earning.
A while later he reaches a second gate. Simpler. No velvet rope, no guard checking a list. Someone waves them both through without a second thought — and it turns out this was heaven all along! The first gate was the final test.
This story is not really about heaven, it’s about character. And it neatly envelopes why we love dogs as much as we do.
A dog doesn’t love you for your résumé. It doesn’t recalculate its loyalty when you’re having a bad year, or suffer a financial setback, or just suddenly reroute its affections toward someone more convenient. It just stays and goes on loving.
That kind of loyalty is rare enough in people, but it is the default for dogs.💗
Dogs don’t ask us to be impressive. They ask us to be worth staying for — whether we’ve earned it that day or not.
So when the man in the story turns down heaven rather than abandon his dog, the story isn’t really testing whether he loves dogs or the value of dogs. It’s actually testing whether he’s the kind of person who leaves a true and trusting soul behind when it matters most. Whether loyalty is a bond for him, or a shallow commitment that evaporates the moment it costs something.
He wasn’t just rewarded for choosing the dog. He was revealed by it.
I think about this with Mocca on the days I perhaps don’t deserve the full force of her high regard: when the walk is late, or dinner is even later, or I’ve simply been distracted and short with her for no reason she knows about. But she doesn’t keep a ledger. She’s at the door either way, unbothered, glad to see whichever version of me finally shows up. It isn’t loyalty as a transaction. It’s just who she is, on the good days and the ones I get things wrong.
I write dogs into my stories so often because they embody the kind of loyalty we hope we’re capable of. Their steadfast qualities are a central thread running through everything I put into The Goodest Boy — ten stories, ten dogs, all of them versions of the same quiet theme: that canine love for people which asks nothing and gives all.
If that’s the kind of story you would enjoy, The Goodest Boy, Volume 2 is out now at https://a.co/d/0hJlL3bv and in paperback https://a.co/d/0dHSZ7JY.
Volume 1 is available here!
