What Dogs Taught Me About Connection and Life Abroad
- thriveonthrough
- 5 days ago
- 6 min read
France has a curious relationship with dogs.
You can bring a dog into a café without anyone batting an eye. Dogs nap under restaurant tables, ride calmly on public transport, and wait patiently while their humans linger over coffee. And yet, many parks in Paris don’t allow dogs at all, even on a leash. You can sit next to a dog at lunch, but not walk one freely through certain green spaces. If you’re a “dog person”, it’s a contradiction you notice fairly quickly once you’re living here.
It’s also one of those details that seems insignificant until you’re new, trying to find your bearings, and suddenly very aware of where you’re allowed to go, where you’re not, and how welcome you feel as you move through your new environment.
This came back to me recently after I was invited to speak in a move-abroad group. Someone offered a simple piece of advice for people relocating to France: having a dog can sometimes make things easier. Not because it magically solves the challenges of moving abroad, but because it opens doors to small interactions. It gives you a reason to get out of the house, and can help create situations where people talk to you.
That observation stayed with me for a bit, not only because it was clever, but because it added meaning to something I’ve experienced more than once in my 25+ years of living abroad.
Dogs aren’t the solution to expat loneliness…but sometimes they can make the early days feel a little less empty.
When you first move abroad, loneliness doesn’t always arise the way you expect. It can often show up in subtle ways: walking through unfamiliar streets with no one to text, spending weekends without big plans, realizing you don’t yet have “your people” (or even your “places”, for that matter).
You can be surrounded by people and still feel alone.
In those early months, connection can feel like something you’re supposed to figure out. You’re told to join groups and make friends, learn the language faster and integrate. But the pressure to do all of that at once can make you want to retreat instead of reach out to others.
This is where a dog can change that.
A dog doesn’t care if you speak perfectly. It doesn’t ask you to explain who you are or where you’re from. It simply needs to be walked, fed, and played with…and that alone can be enough to change how your days feel.
I didn’t understand this consciously when I first moved to France. I’ve always been a “dog person” and I knew that having a dog beside me during those early years would make things more bearable. It gave structure to days that otherwise felt too open, too quiet and unfamiliar.
Having a dog meant having more of a routine. We walked the same routes and passed by some of the same neighbors. We became recognizable…not fully known, but no longer invisible. And when you’re new in a country, being seen at all matters more than you might initially think.
I didn’t realize it until recently, but my dogs have carried me through many chapters and transitions of life abroad. Fluckie helped me through the initial periods of homesickness, when everything felt foreign and slightly out of reach. Effy helped me get through prolonged post-surgical recovery periods. She was also there to help with the isolation of multiple COVID lockdowns, when my world was suddenly limited to a tiny apartment, and my daily routine with her was the only thing keeping time from blurring together. And then there was Roxie, who helped me get through career burnout and divorce, when emotional stability felt fragile and inconsistent. Her endless supply of cuddles and kisses cheered me up at a time when it seemed like nothing ever could.
Through all of those chapters, having a dog meant I was never entirely alone in my apartment, or in my head.
That doesn’t mean that having a dog fixed anything. It didn’t erase grief or uncertainty, but it grounded me in the present moment in a way that was surprisingly stabilizing. There’s something about caring for another being that keeps you tethered to daily life, even when your inner world feels unsettled.
France, for all its contradictions around dogs, makes space for this kind of companionship in everyday life. Dogs are woven into routines here. And because of that, they become an easy point of contact between people.
You don’t have to be fluent to exchange a smile over a dog. You don’t have to explain your story to chat briefly on a sidewalk. You don’t have to be “settled in” to be acknowledged. Those small interactions add up.
What I find interesting is that this doesn’t only apply to people who actually have dogs. There’s a deeper lesson here, about how connection forms when you remove the pressure.
Dogs create low-stakes moments. They give you permission to be present without performing, and offer companionship without expectation. And for someone adjusting to life abroad, that can make a real difference.
Moving abroad can feel extremely lonely at times…not because you’re isolated, but because meaningful connection takes time to build. And during that time, you’re often left with a gap between the life you left and the one you haven’t fully created yet.
Dogs can fill that void. They don’t replace human relationships, but they can help get you through challenging moments while you’re waiting for deeper relationships to form.
This is something I see again and again with expats and immigrants, whether they’re pre-move, newly arrived, or years in. The early phase of life abroad often feels emotionally heavier than people anticipate, because the familiar markers of belonging aren’t there yet.
You don’t know where you fit in. You don’t know who to call. You don’t know which version of you will emerge in this new country you’re living in.
In that space, companionship of any kind can help regulate those feelings of disorientation. For some people it’s a dog. For others it’s a routine, a regular walk, a favorite café, a class, or a volunteer role. The form may vary, but its underlying function is the same: creating steadiness while everything around you is evolving.
What having a dog taught me is that connection doesn’t always arrive in the ways we expect. It doesn’t always come through instant friendships or social breakthroughs. Sometimes it arrives through repetition, through showing up in the same places and being recognizable before you’re really known. And sometimes, it comes through presence.
In a way, France’s mixed rules around dogs kind of mirror expat life. You’re welcomed in some spaces and restricted in others. You learn where you belong through experience, not explanation. Over time, you stop pushing against every boundary and start understanding the way things work in your new environment.
That learning takes patience but within it, there’s also an invitation: to let connection unfold gradually, without forcing it.
If you’re in the early stages of settling abroad and feeling more alone than you anticipated, it’s often because you’re between chapters: the life you knew is behind you, and the one you’re building hasn’t fully taken shape yet.
Companionship, in whatever form it takes, can help bridge that gap.
Dogs won’t solve all the challenges of living abroad. Neither will perfect integration or flawless language skills. But sometimes, they make the days feel warmer, the streets less empty, and the waiting more tolerable.
And that, in the early chapters of a life abroad, can be enough to keep you moving forward…one walk at a time.
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Living abroad brings up more than logistics. Often it brings up parts of ourselves we didn’t expect.If you’d like ongoing reflection and perspective as you navigate life abroad, you can follow Thrive on Through on Facebook & Instagram, where I share daily insights from long-term life overseas.
I’m also preparing a 21-part video series about life abroad, created for people in the early stages of moving and settling in — the questions, the adjustments, and the parts no one really prepares you for. Staying connected is the easiest way to hear about it first.
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