Many dog owners are enthusiastic advocates of having two or more dogs, thinking it supplies a more satisfying life for them. Obviously, no dog likes being left alone for long periods of time, but if that is relatively rare for a dog that lives with humans who are home most of the time, how missed and longed for is companionship with other dogs, and is getting a companion dog to enrich their lives highly advised?

If you consider what we have shared with you, you may make the connection that being deprived of living with other dogs can be compensated for during the dream state when dogs return to the higher astral plane and frolic with animal friends of all kinds. So they are having an appreciable period of time each and every day with members of their own kind and representing quite long‑standing relationships far beyond the average lifespan in the physical. Where having additional dogs in the family is of greatest value is when the human owners are not present for long stretches of time during the day. It is stressful for dogs to be left on their own because they are pack animals designed for love and interaction with others they can relate to, so if there is a second dog and the two are left home on their own while the owners are at work, that can be an acceptable living arrangement because the dogs are not in total isolation but have a companion they can spend time with and interact with and feel safe and have an enjoyable life while their humans are away. So it becomes a very humane act on the part of pet owners to consider this if their lifestyle limits the amount of time they can spend with their pet. If neglected from the standpoint of the time investment, the dogs in a family can bond to one another more strongly than with their humans so that can be an unexpected, and to some, an undesirable consequence, but it comes about through the relative investment in the relationship. If humans are attentive to their animals, even when there is a large menagerie of dogs, they will still prize their human, or humans, and want to be with them and interact with them if the humans express the desire and make the effort to do so. As with human relationships, it is a two-way street—both parties, human and canine, need to make an investment in time and energy for the bonding to happen and the relationship grow and deepen in intensity. Most dogs will have plenty of love to share. When there is a devotion to a particular person within a group in a family, that will happen often because of karmic history where there was a prior lifetime of high devotion to someone in particular and the animal is cueing off of that prior history in deciding how it needs to behave and offer itself within the relationship to the humans present. This can be a trait that is genetically predetermined as well and that is why it is a characteristic of some breeds, that they are known as frequently being "one‑person dogs." So just as with people, the wealth of experience in other lifetimes will inform to some degree who they are and how they act in the current life, so there is an element of luck in choosing a pet but the same is true in having a child—that newborn child will have a huge karmic history that will largely influence the personality and many characteristics that make that person an individual. And there may be many things that make it a perfect member of a family because of shared interests and values or, conversely, make that individual stick out like a sore thumb, so to speak, because their karmic predisposition puts them at odds in what develops as their personality traits and behavioral idiosyncrasies that may make them at odds with a smooth‑running family group of otherwise like-minded individuals. So there needs to be an awareness of these factors and a tolerance to understand each is an individual, whether human or animal, and will be influenced by many hidden factors that are expressed unexpectedly and not on purpose but through the inner workings of each individual from birth.