To those who own a dog, the dog owns their heartbeats. For these two moms, their love for their dog was magnified so much more when they received a cutesy letter. Their neighbor, a ten-year-old boy named Troy, had written this letter proposing his friendship with his neighbor’s golden retriever. As soon as the letter from the fourth grader was shared in an Instagram post, their dog, named Arthur, became famous. In the letter, the boy asked the neighbors, if he could babysit their dog after the pandemic and take him for a walk. Written in red and blue markers, the letter read, “Hello neighbor, my name is Troy. I am in 4th grade and I’m just wondering if maybe after this virus, you need a dog sitter, and if so then I can take your dog on walks and more.” Later, they shared Troy’s letter on Arthur’s Instagram account, @arthurthefloof, “I made friends with a small hooman today. He’s like basically me-sized. I bet I can get him to give me more treats than my hoomans.”
Not only did people compliment the heartwarming gesture of the little boy, but also threw oodles of flattering remarks about the cuteness of the fluffy creature. Others remarked that this is such a fabulous story.
Image Source: Instagram | andujar_anamaria
Image Source: Instagram | lidorith
In some of the follow-up "pupdates" on their Instagram, the neighbors wrote how a playdate was arranged for Arthur and Troy. In one post, they wrote, “Guess who’s meeting Troy today?”
In a later post, they wrote, “Hello to all my new frens. Just a quick pupdate - me and the smol neighbor had a really great (socially distant) play date today. Because he’s so smol we didn’t take any pics just for privacy purposes but he told me all about his dog fren and even showed me some dance moves! I have a feeling we’re gonna be best buds!”
Apparently, the social media page of Arthur slowly gained popularity after this letter. On this account, they usually post everything from small pup-dates to Arthur’s walks around forests, beaches and streets. In one post, for example, they shared how Arthur had stumbled upon a bunch of kids while taking a walk across the street, “Having the best day! Took a walk in the middle of the street and met some kids with water guns who gave me a little bath.”
Apart from this, on their Instagram page, they also share pics of Arthur sitting in front of treats and gift boxes. Some posts are also related to Arthur snapshotted along with his fluffy chocolate brown companion named Dwight. According to another post, they revealed that Arthur got to spend a little time with Troy before they moved on to Utah.
Image Source: Instagram | arthurthefloof
In their last note cherishing the memories of Troy’s and Arthur’s friendship, they wrote, “For the last day before my birthday, I had to look back on the thing that brought me all you! Thanks to my pal down the hall I made so many internet frens this year. Just as an update, Troy and I hung out a lot before I moved to Utah! This will always be our fav quarantine memory.”
Astonishingly, Arthur has also been featured by Time magazine, the detail of which his owners shared in yet another Instagram post, “So excited to announce I’ve been named @time’s Person of the Year!”
It is usually said that happiness is owning a cute pup, and in the case of these moms, Arthur is the perfect testimony to this!
This article originally appeared 8 months ago.
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Pictured: A healthy practice?
Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.