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I heard him before I met him. He was barking continuously, deep yelps with a clear undertone of panic. An investigation behind the chicken coop of a farm near where I was visiting in Frederick, Maryland, revealed a small dog, emaciated, and tethered to the ground with a rusted chain. He appeared to be about a year old. He had a short black coat, a head sleek as a seal's, lively brown eyes and floppy ears.
He was being detained for the crime of chasing sheep, a serious offense in farm country, and was on his way to the pound. He was in trouble, and he seemed to know it.
"Believe me, you don't want that dog," said the farmer.
But I did, and two days later, I had him.
"Good luck," the man said. "You're gonna need it."
As it turned out, that dog was my luck instead. Over the next 13 years, he was a guide into worlds I never would have discovered on my own. We walked in the mornings, in the evenings and late at night. We saw rabbit holes, deer tracks, raccoons and foxes, and heard the unsettling scream of owls long after dark.
He was everything to me. But a dog, as any reasonably sane dog lover knows, is not a child, a substitute spouse, a burglar alarm, status symbol, psychotherapist or even a friend, not in the human sense anyway. A dog is a dog, which turns out to be more than enough.
By age 10, what a friend described as Bear's "rambunctious good cheer" had mellowed. He feinted lunges at squirrels instead of giving actual chase. By 12, he was having serious trouble on stairs, and his face was white around the eyes and muzzle, giving him the look of a wise raccoon.
I met each small loss with fierce resistance. Trouble on the porch steps? My boyfriend built a ramp. Paws slipping on the bare floor? Rugs were laid. Need a boost up the staircase each night? I boosted away.
But the day came when what had seemed mere old age began to look more like disease. Bear was stumbling regularly, his reflexes were slower, and some days he hopped across the yard as if it were covered in hot coals.
The brain scan was negative. But in early March, Bear began to run a high fever and suddenly could not take more than a few steps without help. The vet made an emergency house call. He thought Bear's spleen looked distended. Have an internist check it with ultrasound, he said.
The spleen was fine, but the test revealed something much worse.
"Bingo," the internist said, returning with a syringe of dark, plum-colored fluid pulled from Bear's gut. There was a hole in Bear's intestine, and a massive abdominal infection. There were two options: operate immediately, or, the doctor said, "I'm afraid we have to put him down."
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