This dog's life

HERE IS a love story.

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We had a dog, just a dog. We loved him beyond tender phrases. When he died, our grief spread everywhere. Over time, it became gentler and more specific. We missed the smell of fur between his toes, the gentlemen's paw extended to friend and foe, his sighs of joy in sleep.

Two, three, four years passed. Specific memories faded, though not the sound of his sighs.

Another dog came our way. She was a retired show dog -- a piece of beautiful ceramics -- but past her prime, and no longer circuit quality. She had been owned many times. This might have left anyone full of doubt and suspicion. Instead, it left her a perfect lady: gracious, but without passion. Nothing stirred her well-bred waters. There was nothing personal in her. The tail wagged calmly and democratically for anyone. She followed us on leash without question, dutiful but disinterested. She never barked. She had been carefully but not intimately treated, and she coped with change by serene detachment.

We wondered how we could love a dog so subtly damaged, so empty, so without inward spark.

We took her home. She needed spaying immediately; an unfortunate but necessary beginning. Because she was older, the procedure was not minor. When we picked her up after the operation, she staggered and vomited, but followed us docilely. She did not really know who we were. She went where she was told. That was her nature.

The recovery was long; she had no particular reason to hurry toward health. The first night home, we slept on the floor next to her. She was confused and in pain, upended, but compliant. She accepted our care with dignity. She had always been well-cared for.

Slowly she regained strength and mobility. By then, we had grown to admire her uncomplaining nature. We loved this porcelain dog.

The affair, one-sided at first, began. We leaned down to gaze in her eyes and held hands with her paws. We made her name into a song. We praised her for a thousand silly things. We brought her everywhere.

She began to see that this was not a professional relationship -- it was personal. Signs of recognition were subtle at first: the democratic tail started to thump harder when we were around; the eyes lit up when she saw us; the perfectly formed head found its way under armpits at inconvenient moments; the well-maintained teeth -- which we had not noticed previously -- rinned. Then she was following us wherever we went, whether we meant to bring her or not. Her attachment was a force of nature. She was filling up and catching on fire.

With fullness also came its opposite. She moped in our absence. Her look was mournful -- though she never lodged formal complaint -- when we left in the morning. One night when we came home, she made a sound; a deep, primitive noise, straight from solar plexus. It was a groan of joy. It was the stuff of life.

Very recently the lump on her flank was biopsied. We had always known it was a fat pad. It was a tumor. Days later, she was in surgery for the second time. On the phone afterwards, the vet said the incision line was over a foot long.

We were waiting in the reception area to pick her up, almost a year to the day since the last time we waited to take her home. We had the bottles of antibiotics and pain pills, the suture care hand-out, follow-up appointments. The technician warned us that she looked like a mess, and that she would be dazed from the anesthesia. Before he disappeared behind a closed door to retrieve her, he added that she had been a perfect lady.

After a minute, she staggered through the door on leash. Her left side was raw, zipped shut with stitches. Rubber drains poked out of the flank. She shook her head to clear it. Then she lifted her nose and sniffed twice. With all the passion and fire you could ask for, she barreled unevenly across the room, straight to us.

The pathology will return soon: it will be the end of medical trouble, or the beginning. Cancer does not make choices for man or beast based on merit. But personally (and everything that matters comes down to the personal), we believe that she is too full of love now for death to have an early grip. She craves exactly what she has finally found. Why is this unrealistic? Love has brought her to life, and love will keep her alive.

Elissa Ely is a psychiatrist.