Live Like a Dog Today started as a simple idea I couldn't shake: that dogs somehow know how to live in ways most of us forget. Presence. Joy. Loyalty. Courage. I didn't set out to build a philosophy. I was just trying to understand why my dogs seemed to be doing life better than I was.

Hi, I'm Roy.

I didn't start this because I had answers. Honestly, I started it because I didn't. My dogs were the ones who seemed to have it figured out, and I was just trying to keep up.

I live in Upstate New York with Mozzie, a Boxer/Pitbull rescue who follows me from room to room like he's convinced I'll vanish the second he blinks. And then there's Marlow, my Frenchie/Pitbull mix. I still feel her everywhere. It's strange how she still shapes my days long after she stopped walking through them.

I grew up in a tiny country town in New York called Jefferson. Single parent home, five kids, not a lot of money to go around. But my mom showed up every single day, even on the days I'm sure she had nothing left to give. That kind of consistency sticks with you.

I've lived a few different chapters of my adult life. Married, divorced, remarried. Each one taught me something, mostly about communication, about presence, and about how easy it is to drift away from yourself without ever noticing you're doing it.

For years I built a career in the corporate world. It felt like the responsible thing to do, especially coming from a childhood where stability wasn't a given. And I did learn a lot there. How to lead. How to communicate. How to actually support people. But somewhere in there I stopped checking in with myself. I was doing all the things I was "supposed" to do, and not nearly enough of the things that made me feel alive. It took my dogs, of all things, to slow me down enough to notice.

Mozzie and Marlow were opposites. Mozzie's food motivated, loves a good car ride, enjoys being chased, and follows me wherever I go. Marlow was mostly independent, almost aloof, until nighttime, when she'd suddenly decide she needed affection (and a solid game of fetch). She loved sticking her head out the window and lying in the sun.

Watching them, I started noticing how often I was moving fast but not actually here. How I could feel grateful and still not feel grounded. How I could be "doing well" by every outside measure and still feel like something was missing. Nothing dramatic. Just this quiet sense that I wasn't fully in my own life.

Dogs don't deal with that. They're not optimizing anything. Not comparing, not performing, not replaying yesterday or worrying about tomorrow. They're just living. Fully. Honestly.

The more I watched them, the more I started wondering when I stopped living like that. Or if I ever really did.

Live Like a Dog grew out of that, not as a brand, but as a reminder I needed for myself. A way to keep the lessons close.

I made the first Live Like a Dog shirt almost ten years ago. Not for anyone else. Just for me. Something to put on in the morning that reminded me what I was supposed to be paying attention to.

It sat like that for years. A personal thing. A reminder, not a business.

Then in late 2024 I started building an actual website and real designs. Mozzie and Marlow weren't getting any younger, and I think some part of me knew I wanted to build something that would outlast them. A legacy, not just for me, but for them. A way to keep them close even after they were gone.

Marlow passed only a few months after the site went live. Looking back, it almost feels like fate that I started building it when I did. Like some part of me knew before I did.

So this became a philosophy. A practice. A movement, if you want to call it that. Not about becoming someone new. About coming back to the parts of ourselves we've been ignoring.

Outside of all this, I'm someone who loves fitness, being outdoors, and yes, I'll admit it, reality TV. I'm in a season of picking up new skills, trying things without overthinking them, and figuring out what a fully alive life actually looks like for me. Some days I get it right. Some days I don't. But I'm trying.

I'm not an expert. I'm just someone paying attention, to my habits, my story, my dogs, and the small choices that make a life feel like it's actually mine.

If you're here, maybe you're trying to do the same thing.

So let's live like a dog. One day at a time.