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The Trouble with Loving a Dog

They will eventually leave you facing a grief few people know how to measure

Parker is not what you’d call a “good” dog. You can sternly say “no jumping” or “calm down,” but the words and tone are meaningless when someone comes to the door. She cannot fathom how someone could not be as deliriously excited to see her as she is to see them.

Then there was the cake, or the raw steak, or the baguette, or the Boursin garlic and fine herb cheese puck on the fancy charcuterie tray. The list is long, so let’s just go with the cake. It’s for my fiftieth birthday and it’s stunning. A piece of art from a boutique bakery that probably cost as much as a piece of art from a boutique gallery. A joke is cracked; laughter erupts. A land shark slinks her way through a sea of legs. Now she’s on two paws, not four. Now her furry black face is a cloud of vanilla buttercream icing with two eyes that blink: Wasn’t me.

Don’t even start on the squirrels that transform a fifty-pound goofy canine into a methamphetamine-popping assassin.

No, Parker may not be a “good” dog. But she sure is a great one. The best, really.

As an ambassador of joy, every day is a celebration of a day well-lived. She likes to snuggle stuffed toys. In order, her favourites are: Bunny II, Gingerbread Man, Christmas Sloth, a blue ball that looks like the Statue of Liberty head, and a Caesar with celery and shrimp garnishes, which, hilariously, she will only seek out during a respectable cocktail hour.

Shadow is her nickname, because where I go, she follows. She howls in perfect pitch to firetrucks screaming in the distance. Children are allowed to pull on her ears and tail, and somehow, she knew just when my aging dad needed her to press into his leg and sit calmly, letting him stroke her head. Need a cuddle while watching a movie or having a nap? Not a problem.

Parker, if very happy, does not merely bounce but will hurl herself in the air for a full 360. Which is the only appropriate greeting when I trudge home from a trip reporting on tragedies, hauling not just luggage but the weight of the stories I’ve been told.

I should be an expert in loss, as that has been my profession for........

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