The thing about watching a dog run, really run, is it strips away all the pretense we wrap ourselves in. No existential dread, no performance anxiety, just pure kinetic joy translated into muscle and breath. Sharka doesn’t give a shit about my Instagram feed or my quarterly earnings report for the board. She’s a four-legged refutation of everything hollow.
Under the Captiola Wharf’s pylons where the light cuts through in dusty shafts, where the pier’s underbelly drips with barnacles and the smell of kelp and salt hangs thick, that’s where truth lives. Not in some meditation app or self-help gospel, but in the simple, beautiful fact of a creature moving through space because movement itself is enough.
I’ve forgotten how to be present like that. I often intellectualize and monetize and optimize the wonder right out of everything. But Sharka Cão de Água ? She’s running like the world depends on it, which today maybe it does. Like joy is a radical act, which it absolutely is.
Watch her disappear into shadow and light, and tell me you don’t feel something crack open inside.