Your dog doesn’t need you to say anything clever. Some company is easiest when nobody has to talk.

Ordinary company carries a small running cost, since you are tracking how you come across while you talk. An animal removes that cost entirely, because there is nothing to come across as. It rests you for the same reason a comfortable silence rests you, which is that nothing is being graded.

Notice which company leaves you lighter and which leaves you tired, and stop assuming the tired kind means you are bad at people. Spend twenty minutes with the easy kind this week, dog or not. Then see whether you have more patience for the harder rooms afterwards.