Wow, what the heck was THAT!? The year 2025 was a doozy, wasn’t it? I was about to write “what a rollercoaster!” but it wasn’t like a rollercoaster. At all. It didn’t go up and down, up and down. It just seemed to go down, and then down, and then down some more.

It’s like when the weather turns on our walkies. At first it’s just a little drizzle, which is fine because I am brave and my curls are waterproof-adjacent. But then the drizzle turns to a downpour and I start to question my moral objection to doggie raincoats. And the wind starts. And a big truck splashes past us and soaks my legs. I didn’t choose this! I was just told walkies.

Then my leash gets tangled around a pole I didn’t see. And my ears get flipped inside out by the wind. My paws are muddy, my fur is soaked, and my tail is drooping. By the time we get home, I look like I’ve made a series of very poor life decisions, even though all I did was be a good dog when my hoomans asked, “walkies?” Sometimes things just get worse and worse, even when you’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to do.

But I have digressed.

The year 2025 was a very hard one, with lots of bad news. So much bad news that hoomans seem to have stopped following it sometimes. It’s like when there are loud strange banging noises in the sky at night that won’t stop. I bark at it once. Then again. And then again and again. But eventually I stop. Not because the banging got better, but because I’m tired, my throat hurts, and I don’t know what else to do to stop the scary sounds. So I lie down and put my head on my paws. Sometimes I even hide under my bed. I need to wait for my hoomans to hug me and tell me it’s going to be okay.

So I’m telling you now: it’s going to be okay. I’m not a dog historian, but I’ve learned a few things from my hoomans. They’ve told me that America has been through hard times before. Like times before when the country was fighting with itself and democracy felt shaky, but the good has always won at the end. Kind of like how I always win tug-of-war, even when my hoomans pretend they’re stronger.

They’ve also told me that the President likes to act very tough, but everyone knows he cannot fight against his quickly aging biology. And more and more politicians are starting to leave his side. Recent elections have gone very well for the good guys, and midterms will be here sooner than any of us expect.

So please hang in there and I will try to help you in 2026. I know it’s hard right now. Like when my ball rolls under the sofa and my hoomans don’t hear my cries for help. I try to scoop it out with my paw, but all I manage to do is make things worse by ripping up the underside of the sofa. Now the ball is still stuck, the sofa is damaged, and we’re definitely not going to the park today. None of this was my plan. I just wanted to play.

But here’s the thing I’ve learned, being a dog who watches hoomans closely. Eventually, someone moves the sofa. The ball rolls out. Sometimes there are even new balls I didn’t know were coming. Or snacks that also come out from under the sofa with the ball. We go back outside. We walk again. Maybe the weather is better, maybe it isn’t but we walk anyways.

So if 2025 felt like being stuck, soaked, tangled, barking at noises you couldn’t control, that doesn’t mean you did anything wrong or that any of this is permanent. And tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, someone will definitely move the sofa.

Thanks for reading!

Canada Resists