As a computer geek, all of my jobs start the same way: with a crazed phone call from someone having an emotional meltdown. Once I reassure the individual that I can fix their technical emergencies, I’m paid to arrive on time and save the day. It’s a life. But even though my jobs all begin the same way, one job—in particular—ended in a most unusual fashion.

On this rainy evening, I found myself working at Carson City Hall, about twenty miles south of Los Angeles. Kneedeep in wires, I realized that I’d forgotten to bring in some tools I needed. As I headed out to my car through the rain, I walked past an empty bus stop and was surprised to see a dog taking shelter from the downpour there. She was a black Pit Bull with cropped ears, and it was clear that she’d recently had a litter of puppies. She sat lopsided on her haunches just in front of the fold-down seats, so she looked like she was waiting for the bus to arrive. In a private but brilliant act of comedy, I said out loud, “Hey, are you waiting for the #75 local?” The dog’s response was even more brilliant. She gave me a look—one of those “Please help me” looks; one of those, “You’re the only chance I have” looks; one of those, “How low are you going to feel if you turn your back on me and walk away?” looks.

For the record: I’ve adopted three cats, rescued and placed three others and—as a direct result of the feline invasion— also rushed various half-dead birds and rodents to the veterinarian for resuscitation. So I’m a well-credentialed pushover, thank you very much. But, with three cats at home, I wasn’t rescuing, fostering or adopting this dog. Literally: no chance. I sensibly turned around, walked off into the rain toward my car and left the dog at the bus stop. Only, she followed. As I walked through several rows of cars, she trailed me, sheepishly, her body unusually low to the ground, as if she didn’t fully believe that following me was in her best interests. Our eyes met as I opened my trunk to grab my tool bag, but she immediately looked away. I was stunned. Here was the most feared dog in America—a black Pit Bull with cropped ears— willingly giving up all her power in the hope that survival might be the reward.

Although I wasn’t going to take her home with me, surely there was something I could do to help. And there in my trunk—right in front of me—was the case of canned food I’d just purchased for my cats earlier that day. I paused, chuckled and then made the Decision: I opened a can of the cat food, dumped it on the pavement and watched, shocked, as the dog devoured it, belched and looked back at me for more. Total elapsed time: three seconds. “Apparently, you’re hungry,” I said while giving her another can, which she also devoured. This, of course, was my first dilemma: one doesn’t give a homeless dog a five-star meal and then expect her to say, “Thank you,” leave a tip and head back to the bus stop. I shrugged, slammed the trunk closed and walked through the rain into City Hall. She, of course, tried to follow me right inside. The staff didn’t allow that.

So instead, she waited under a canopy in plain sight through the front windows, a constant reminder. She was very polite about it, of course: she didn’t stare through the windows with sad, hopeful eyes like a tortured soul silently begging me for more cans of meat. She just curled up in a ball and tried to sleep.

I attempted to convince my client that he should adopt the dog. “Isn’t she so nice?” I said. “Look how beautiful she is! Wouldn’t she make a great pet?” He said no. Repeatedly. However: after forty-five minutes, I actually guilted the poor SOB into calling his mother to ask her if she might take the dog. The entire conversation lasted maybe fifteen seconds, was entirely in Spanish and went from “Hola, Mama,” to allout screaming almost instantaneously. My client slammed down the phone, wincing. There was a pause. “I should have just taken the dog over to her instead,” he said, looking down and shuffling his feet.

Two hours later, I’d saved the day once again. Computers all now working, my client and I left City Hall together. The Pit Bull immediately perked up and ran to me. After two hours. That dog waited out in the cold and rain for me for two hours. I don’t wait two hours for anything, especially outside in the drizzle. I was at a loss for words. My client was not.

“Hey, good luck with your new dog. You were right—she’s a real beauty!” he said, walking off to his car.

“She sure is,” I said, walking off toward mine. And the dog followed. I now faced my second dilemma: leave the dog when she clearly needed help or take her home with me and risk freaking out my cats. In response, I did something I’d never done before: I asked God—out loud—what to do.

“Please tell me,” I pleaded, looking into the dog’s eyes. “What am I supposed to do here? Do I take this dog or do I leave her?” The dog sat and looked at me with her head cocked. I waited for my answer. Five seconds. Fifteen. Sixty. The clouds didn’t part; there was no booming, echoing voice; and the rain didn’t stop dramatically. Instead, I opened the passenger door and announced to the dog, “Okay, here it is: if you get in, you’re going with me tonight. If you don’t get in, you’re going to stay here.”

The dog sat there, unwilling to get in the car. I had my answer.

I picked her up, put her in the front seat and drove off. Thus started a beautiful relationship.

“My best support came from my dog,” is a common sentiment among people who have been through a divorce. That’s no surprise given the well-known benefits of dogs. They ease feelings of loneliness, make us feel loved, encourage exercise, promote playfulness and facilitate social interactions. They don’t put pressure on us to cheer up, to get back out there or to stop dressing like a slob. They always seem glad to see us. There are countless ways that they make life better for people in any kind of emotional pain, including those whose marriages have ended.

On the other hand, if your ex gets custody of the dog, the agony of the split may be compounded. Not only is your spouse gone, but so is your dog. When I’ve talked to people who have not gotten custody and miss the dog, sometimes that pain seems more raw and intense than the loss of the human relationship. In some cases, that may be because the relationship with the dog is better and healthier than the marriage ever was, and sometimes the loss of the dog is the straw that broke the camel’s back. Either way, losing one’s dog adds to the pain of divorce.

It takes commitment to help a dog through the changes divorce brings. For some people, the focus on the dog is a helpful distraction, but for others, it’s just one more exhausting challenge. One friend of mine knew that her ex would be the best guardian for the dog because he works from home and runs with the dog every day. In contrast, she works long hours and travels a lot, and exercised the dog only on the weekends. To her credit, she did not fight for custody, although she does have visitation rights. She loves the dog, so in his interest, she agreed to a situation that she knew would be more painful to her, and it has been.

If you’ve gone through a divorce, how did your dog play into the pain and the process of healing?

“He’s worse than a baby,” my husband liked to say about our dog Nigel when the Hairy Son was acting particularly needy and pining for our attention. Of course, this was before we had our actual (human) baby this past summer and learned that Nigel—our 11-year-old Lhasa Apso— is indeed not worse than a baby.

In fact, there’s no comparing Nigel to our daughter Mirabelle. Nigel doesn’t cry inconsolably. He doesn’t wake us up throughout the night. He doesn’t suffer from gas pains. He doesn’t require a car seat or diaper changes or burping or the application of diaper cream.

In other words, Nigel’s a dog—and a fairly self-sufficient one—but it took having a baby for me to realize it. I was so focused on how he would react to a baby interloper invading his house that I didn’t once consider how the birth of my daughter would change our relationship.

Before Mirabelle burst onto the scene in June, Nigel was my one-and-only baby. He came into my life when I was in my 20s and childless. So I did the natural thing: I infantilized and coddled my 16-pound pup beyond measure. He was my entertainment. For a good laugh, I’d put my glasses on him or make up silly songs and dance him around the house. I wasn’t particularly good at setting boundaries.

Nigel’s been with me throughout eight apartments, four jobs and grad school. I’ve known him significantly longer than my husband. Nigel and I pose together on my Facebook profile photo. And before we replaced them with pictures of our daughter, there were photos of him throughout our house. A custom-built set of stairs leads up to our bed so Nigel has easy access to a comfortable night’s rest.

Before Baby, I never thought of Nigel as a dog. That label sounded too ordinary for my adorable, grumpy, Ewok-like creature. It was no coincidence that my preferred nickname for him was “the Son.” But in the chaotic weeks immediately following the birth of our daughter, Nigel became a burden. As I tried to care for the many needs of my vulnerable five-pound baby, even something as simple as putting kibble in his bowl seemed like a chore.

Nigel’s heft (in comparison to Mirabelle’s delicate, light-as-a-feather form) and the longevity of our relationship let me take advantage of him. I felt I didn’t have the time, wherewithal and emotional capacity to shower him with the love he was accustomed to. Yet it may have been the sturdiness of our Before-Baby relationship that gave Nigel canine insight into my suddenly strange, distant behavior. He knew I’d return to him. I just needed time, which he was kind enough to grant me.

To understand why I’m so grateful to Nigel for his patience during this turbulent newborn period, you have to understand his personality. While I love him to pieces, I could not objectively describe him as a compassionate, outgoing creature. Rather, he’s stubborn, bossy, insistent, inward-focused and a bit obtuse … or, “worse than a baby” (but not really). Part of Nigel’s personality originates with his breed, and part is due to the way I’d babied him for so long. I did not have faith that he could generously share my attention with another creature.

Nigel’s vet, JoAnn Levy of Canfield Vet, Dog and Cat Hospital, had more hope than I did. Nine months pregnant at Nigel’s well-dog checkup, I mentioned that I was concerned about how Nigel would receive an infant into the fold. When she asked how he acted with other newborns, I told her that he was actually quite curious about them, an eager sniffer when friends’ babies come to visit. Dr. Levy concluded that Nigel would be fine with a baby in the house.

I doubted it could be that simple. After all, our baby would be a permanent fixture, not just an entertaining visitor available for an exploratory sniff or two.

When I adopted Nigel almost a decade ago, his original owner made me promise two things: First, that I would never let Nigel roam off-leash. Second, that if I were to have children one day, I would not exclude Nigel from our growing clan. The previous owner knew that a newborn demands an extraordinary amount of attention at the cost of nearly everything else, even a beloved pet. While the previous owner was looking out for Nigel’s best interests, even she couldn’t imagine that this finicky dog would in fact have more patience than all of us—would in fact turn out to be a full-fledged comrade in Operation Baby.

We were not short on advice on how to introduce Nigel and the baby. My sister-in-law suggested we leave her in her car seat (on the floor) and let Nigel “find” her so that she’d be his little charge. A friend suggested that I shower Nigel with affection when my husband brought the baby into the house for the first time. To familiarize him with “eau de Mirabelle,” we even brought Mirabelle’s first hat with her scent all over it home from the hospital. We implemented none of these plans.

Instead, we were already home with Mirabelle when our friend, who was looking after Nigel during my hospital stay, returned him to our abode. I was carrying Mirabelle in my arms. Nigel was happy to come home and I made an overly enthusiastic scene to welcome him.

That was probably the most attention I paid him for about two weeks.

Something surprising happened during those two weeks. Nigel did not sulk at the lack of attention or act jealous of the baby. It’s unlikely he was thrilled with his new circumstances, but he quickly took his place on the couch, head between his paws, observing it all. At night, Nigel remained on our bed as time and again, I leaned into the baby’s crib to pick her up, feed her, soothe her, rock her.

He appeared to have resigned himself to the situation and did not act out. He did not attempt to leave our bedroom, where he’s always slept. This was his family and he was staying put.

A few times in the middle of the night when the baby’s cries grew in volume, I took her into the living room, where we retired to the rocking chair. The Hairy Son, who was accustomed to lounging on our king-sized bed, plush sofas, lush blankets and down pillows, took his place on the hardwood floor by my feet as I rocked the baby. He did it to keep me company.

One night a couple of weeks after Mirabelle’s introduction to our household, Nigel returned to my radar. It was 9 pm. I was exhausted, but Mirabelle, in the throes of the “witching hour,” was alternating between two states: fervent eating and fervent crying. Bedtime was nowhere in sight.

Except for Nigel. As he does every night, he went into our bedroom to retire for the evening. This simple act gave me hope that one day (with luck, sooner rather than later) my daughter would learn a nighttime routine as well. I thought to myself that if my Hairy Son is smart enough to know when it’s bedtime, then surely our Hairless Daughter will grasp this one day, too.

That night, for the first time, I viewed Nigel as an independent being and developed a sense of respect for him. He was not a creature to be coddled and infantilized. He knew the ropes. He gave me hope that from chaos can come order. It just takes time.

Yet even though I appreciated Nigel’s patience with me and our new situation, I didn’t understand it. How could a dog who would ordinarily growl at anyone trying to move him from his spot on the couch be so docile with a vociferous baby invading his space?

I called Dr. Levy, his vet, for some answers.

“Once a new baby comes into the family, they see that baby as part of the pack because that baby is so attached to you, his beloved human,” said Dr. Levy.

“They often become better behaved because they have a younger member of the pack to protect and include.”

But I still didn’t understand why Nigel wasn’t acting jealous.

“They have a job now,” said Dr. Levy. “They kind of get that you’re taking care of the newest member of the pack.”

I’m happy if Mirabelle gives Nigel a renewed sense of purpose. But I’m truly grateful for the sacrifice he’s made.

Mirabelle’s in daycare now. Mornings are quiet; I work at my computer on the couch with Nigel by my side. When I take a break and glance up from the screen, I often find myself looking at Nigel and thinking, Thank you.

Calm’s returned to our house. Though the pecking order is different, Nigel remains his strong self. But it took having a baby for me to realize that.

When my husband and I lived 1300 miles apart for four years, our dog was with me. Yes, our dog adored my husband and was always ecstatic to see him, but day to day, year after year, it was usually just Bugsy and me in our Wisconsin farmhouse. We had a wonderful relationship. There is a special closeness that develops from spending so much time together and being the main social presence in each other’s home life. Bugsy did a lot to fill the void of being in a long distance marriage, and he benefitted by receiving a huge amount of attention from me.

On the down side, I worried that he only had me to take care of him. If something happened to me like a car accident, what would happen to him? I always left my toilet seats up and had multiple water bowls out just in case an emergency kept me away from home. I also had contingency plans with neighbors and friends to check on him if they noticed I was not home when I should have been.

I know a man who lived alone with his dog when he was doing biological research in northern Canada, and their relationship was far more intense. They were literally each other’s only company for months at a time, and the dog once saved his life by fighting off a bear. As a result, the dog became closer to him than anyone. In fact, years later when his new girlfriend tactfully mentioned that the dog was keeping her awake at night by nearly pushing her off the bed, he was less than sympathetic. He told her that only once she had lived alone with him in a cabin for years and had saved his life, she would have priority over the dog, and not until. That relationship eventually ended, and he went back to living with the true love of his life—the dog.

As fulfilling as intense relationships between one person and one dog are, there are advantages to a dog of living with more humans. In larger families, schedules often stagger a bit which means that the dog is not left home alone for a full workday. There are many people to walk the dog and play fetch, tug or any other game. Dogs in larger families may be groomed or pet more, and have the benefits of different personalities and preferences. Maybe one kid loves to groom the dog, while another never tires of fetch. Perhaps one adult takes the dog for long runs for exercise while the other adult prefers leisurely walks that allow for plenty of time for sniffing all those interesting spots on the grass and mailboxes. Dogs in big families may have more opportunities for interaction because somebody is usually available at any given time.

Of course, in large families, dogs may slip through the cracks because everyone is sure that someone else already walked the dog or played with him. Sometimes family members can be so busy with each other that there is not enough purposeful attention given to the dog. And though many dogs love it, the chaos and high volume of life with a big family can be overwhelming to some dogs.

I say that if the dog is loved and cared for, the size of the family is not the key issue. Still, there are advantages and disadvantages of different size families, and those can vary for individual dogs. What are your experience with dogs and families of various sizes?