What is a Good Life? #176
What Is It About Dogs? with Doug Skoke
Hello and welcome to What is a Good Life? A project exploring the big questions around how we live and what actually matters.
This week I’m reflecting on my conversation with Doug Skoke - Founder & CEO of LFG NOW!, a boutique executive search firm. What begins as a question about why dogs are so emotionally regulating opens into something much wider - grief, crisis, therapy, love, acceptance, and what it actually means to lift others up. It is a real gem of a conversation.
If this project resonates with you, thank you for being here – and if you’d like to support it, consider a paid subscription, sharing, or subscribing.
Take care, Mark
1. My Weekly Reflection
One of my favourite places to be is between my sleeping dog and sleeping toddler on a midday nap.
Watching diaphragms rise and fall. Inhales. Exhales.
Occasional movements of limbs and light snores from my dog. It is easy to get intoxicated.
On two separate occasions, after both their arrivals, my wife halted me in my tracks. I was waxing lyrical about them being in my life, specifically them.
A few months after we collected Alma from a shelter, I mentioned that I was so glad that the sequence of events unfolded as they did, so that we ended up with her.
To which my wife responded, “Do you think had we picked any other dog, you would not have ended up loving that dog too?”
Fair enough.
A few months after Ava was born, a similar exchange occurred. I told my wife I was so glad we’d waited - that otherwise we wouldn’t have had Ava. She asked, “And do you think, if it had been another child, you wouldn’t have felt the same?”
Once again, fair enough.
When I shared this with Doug in this week’s interview, it brought up some memories for him around adopting his sons.
With his first son, he wondered during the adoption period about his capacity to love, a fairly common question for parents going through the process.
“Will I love, can I actually find that in me? To love this newborn that’s being delivered in a different, albeit beautiful way. But, yes, it’s the same answer. I mean, it’s an unequivocal, “of course, you idiot.” And your heart just expands.”
He experienced a similar pattern of thought the second time round and the result was just the same.
“The heart just expands. Love is a beautiful thing. Love is, unconditional love is, a really a big emotion.”
Jennifer Garvey Berger, in last week’s episode, talked about this idea of rising up to love rather than falling into it. That the lens of possibility we hold with love is too narrow.
For most of my life I felt love only existed with immediate family, partners, children, and perhaps a handful of long-term friendships (which was only expressed with several drinks).
Now love feels far less personal than that, less rooted in story or continuity. Yes, with certain relationships it is easier to access or notice, but it more broadly feels like love simply exists.
Almost akin to presence, we can experience it in a moment, a gesture, a look, without a building up to or working on.
Realising this makes this world feel like a very different place.
And if you pay attention, you notice the presence of certain portals that make this realisation easier to make.
For Doug it is a golden doodle called Harley, and for me a Romanian street dog called Alma.
2. This Week’s Questions
Can you think of a moment where you were surprised by your capacity to love?
With whom or in what setting do you most easily feel love? Where does it feel most out of reach?
Thanks for reading What is a Good Life?
3. Weekly Clip From The Podcast
4. Full Episode - What Is It About Dogs? with Doug Skoke - What is a Good Life? #176
Listen to or watch the full conversation with Doug Skoke below.
For Apple podcast click here.
About Me
I am a writer, facilitator, and podcast host, based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed over 300 people. I’m not looking to prescribe universal answers, more that the guests’ lines of inquiry, musings, experiences, and curiosities spark your own inquiry into what the question means to you. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience and more meaningful conversations.