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I spent two years blaming my dog for something that was never his fault. Not in a shouting way. In the way where you sigh when he jumps on the couch. Where you put a blanket down and get irritated when he moves it. Where you scold him off the bed and you mean it, and then he looks at you and you feel like a bad person for the rest of the evening. He's eleven, and somewhere in the last two years he stopped getting on the couch at all. I never noticed it happening. He just started sleeping on the floor beside it instead, and I let him, because it was easier. I had convinced myself he was the problem. That he shed more than other dogs. That something was wrong with him. I vacuumed twice a week. My mom kept telling me to just get a better vacuum. I kept a lint roller in the car and one by the front door. I stopped buying dark clothes. I got good at brushing myself down before going anywhere. Then a woman at the groomer told me the hair was never sitting on my couch. It was woven down deep into the fabric, and everything I owned was only ever touching the top of it. The vacuum, the roller, all of it. She said I could keep cleaning it that same way every day for a year and it would look exactly the same. Then she told me about the glove she keeps at home for her own couch, and said to stop spending money on rollers. I bought the glove that night, mostly to prove her wrong. First pass came off in a rope. Not a few hairs. A rope. I sat on the floor and did the whole couch. It got weirdly addictive watching it come out. I filled a grocery bag and had to go back for a second one. He hadn't been shedding more than other dogs. It had just never been coming out of the couch. Two years of quietly holding it against him. Two years of him getting told off for a mess my own tools couldn't pick up. I called him up onto it that night. Took him a couple of goes to believe I meant it. He's asleep next to me while I write this and he has no idea any of it happened. So this is my apology. Love you buddy. It was never you.