The Dogist: How One Photographer Credits a Dog With Saving His Life

Instagram's iconic dog photojournalist Elias Weiss Friedman, a.k.a. The Dogist, on the many ways dogs upgrade our lives — and turn us into better humans

Story by: Elias Weiss Friedman

I owe my life to a dog. When I was two, my grandmother was watching me and decided she, me, and her six-year-old black Lab, Oreo, should take a walk. Once outside, she realized she'd left her jacket and ducked back in. By the time she came out, I'd vanished — and so had Oreo. She screamed our names, searched everywhere. Nothing.

She called my parents, who called the police, and everyone's imagination immediately went to the darkest places: a well, a kidnapping, worse. Police joined the hunt. Still nothing.

About twenty minutes later, a landscaper spotted a black Lab trotting along the roadside with a toddler tucked close to the curb: me. Each time I drifted toward the street, Oreo steered me back, a fuzzy guardrail on four little legs.

All photos by The Dogist, aka Elias Weiss Friedman

No footage of the rescue exists, and my grandmother understandably clams up whenever it comes up, so my parents' retelling is all the proof I have — plus the half-remembered picture I've built up over years of hearing it. But evidence that such rescues happen all the time? That's everywhere. Search 'dog saves child' online and you'll find a German Shepherd shielding a kid from an attacking dog; a Boston Terrier who roused the family when a toddler began turning blue; a Border Collie in Texas who somehow sensed a teen was having a stroke. My favorite is the simplest: a Bernese Mountain Dog parked beside a crawling baby, a staircase looming to the other side. The Berner knows the stairs spell danger. As the baby creeps toward them, the dog repositions to form a wall. The whole clip is under a minute, and it's nearly impossible to finish dry-eyed.

All photos by The Dogist, aka Elias Weiss Friedman

These are the moments that should fill us with awe — and remind us that technology, at its best, connects rather than divides.

But they can do more. They should push us to really think about dogs and their place beside us, answer every nagging question about canine intelligence and the bonds we form, and explain why a perfectly sane adult would walk away from an ordinary career to photograph dogs on city sidewalks — and then ask their humans how those dogs change them, and turn it all into a book.

All photos by The Dogist, aka Elias Weiss Friedman

That otherwise sane person took the mission everywhere: not just his home streets but Puerto Rico, China, a prison in upstate New York, and a cross-country drive with his just-laid-off brother — all in pursuit of understanding how dogs make their people's lives better in every sense.

I am that otherwise perfectly sane person.

*Elias Weiss Friedman's new book, This Dog Will Change Your Life, lands June 3, 2025. It grew out of a simple truth learned across decades of studying dogs and their humans: Dogs make our lives better by making us better.

This story first appeared in the award-winning Modern Dog magazine. Subscribe today!