The Nobel Laureate Milan Kundera wrote once that dogs are our “link to paradise.”

It seemed a bit over the top when he first wrote that I’m not sure what paradise is, or where it is, but over time, I’ve come to think there is something to it.

Dogs, wrote Kundera, “don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring – it was peace.”

I’ve experienced this peaceful glory with Red, almost every day for the seven years that he has been with me. This is something the two of us do very well and instinctively with one another – sit on hillsides in glorious weather, finding peace.

I’ve tried in my writing not to glorify or emotionalize dogs, sometimes I succeed, sometimes not. Red gets the idea of the timeliness of dogs and people doing nothing together.

But it isn’t really nothing, is it?

From their first times together, dogs have slipped seamlessly into the lives of human beings, and if you let them, they will bring peace and contentment, a spiritual connection that is ancient and deep.

Dogs seem to know what we need, and the great ones give it to us.

This link, asking for people to share their happy dogs on a grim news day, is going viral.