According to sociologist Max Weber, Europe is divided by an invisible line, separating the north from the south. In the warm, southern climate, the pace is slower and the culture is marked by Catholicism.

A central tenet of this faith is the confession: if you have done something wrong, you tell the priest and he lets you repent. In the cold north, society is more efficient and organized, with a clear division between work and free time.

Though most countries today view themselves as secular, historically speaking, they have been informed by the Lutheran approach to life, and thus the northern, more austere culture still tends to put emphasis on hard work, diligence and a general sense of obligation. 

Living in the north makes it easy to work (but difficult to be lazy).

To be a hard worker is to contribute to society and to be a decent individual. It makes for a wealthy and stable society, though its (southern) critics often say this is also what makes the northern region so boring. All work, and no play. No sense of humour, only a consistent focus on maintaining order and productivity.

Someone who doesn’t care about positive numbers or high levels of productivity is a dog.

Regardless of whether it is a Labrador, a Dalmatian or a Poodle, he (or she) couldn’t care less of what humans attempt to get done in their professional lives.

A dog does not know what an inbox is, or that most people are expected to attend an endless number of nauseating and meaningless meetings on any given day of the week.

What the dog does know, however, is that the bed is soft and warm in the morning, that the forest is full of amazing and interesting scents, and that the greatest thing in the world is to run after a speeding tennis ball across a green field. 

Living with a dog in Protestant culture is like having a Catholic presence in your life, someone who always will remind you when it’s time to take a break and to enjoy life.

A dog doesn’t understand linear time, and has never heard of approaching deadlines. A dog lives his life in the moment, experiences life as an everlasting “nowness”, and invites humans to do to the same.

A dog’s life is thus important to have intertwined with a human one, as the two approaches to time and to quality of life can be allowed to have beneficial effects on one another. 

Writer Jenni Diski, in her lauded travel novel Stranger on a train, described not her experience of living with a dog, but with a cat. Nevertheless, the effects seem to be strikingly similar: 

“Sometimes, when one of the cats is sitting on my lap, I have one of those rare experiences of existing completely in the present moment, of apprehending the reality of now with a blinding clarity and of being part of something extraordinary. I find myself astonished that a creature of another species, utterly different to me, honours me with its presence and trust by sitting on me and allowing me to stroke it. This mundane domestic moment is as enormous, I feel at such moments, as making contact across a universe with another intelligence.”

In Italy, after dinner, it is not uncommon for people to get up from the table and go for a slow walk, in Italian called “passeggiata”, digesting the food before it’s time for coffee and limoncello. In Scandinavia, this ritual is unheard of, but when there is a dog present, it happens almost without thinking.

One moment you are seated with family and friends around the table, discussing politics or perhaps a difficult situation at work, the next you are causally strolling in a nearby park, watching the dog smell the flowers and the traces left by the other dogs in the neighbourhood.

This is because the dog has forced you – and everyone else in the group – to become grounded and be present in the moment, forgetting the worries of tomorrow and the injustices of the past, instead stopping and, quite literally, smelling the roses.