Original Posted in 2006
The life of a good dog is like the life of a good person, only shorter and more compressed.
In the thirteen years since Sydney had joined our family, nine pounds of belly fat and needle teeth, he had grown ancient by the standards of his breed. And as well, I had grown older. My memory stutters. My knees hurt. Without my glasses the words on a page look like ants at a picnic. I love my son, and he loves me, and Sally makes my world shine.
Starting out, I thought that life was terribly complicated, and in some ways it is. But contentment can be pretty simple. When I observe, I learn and there is one thing that I learn from watching our dogs over their lifetimes: to roll with the punches, to take things as they come, to measure myself not in terms of the past or the future but of the present, to raise my nose in the air from time to time and, at least metaphorically, holler, “I smell the bacon!” I am not what I once was, and neither, by the end, is anyone else.
I was almost exultant at the love we had managed to muster for that old dog, and at the thought that someday, if I was very lucky, I might have a death as simple and serene as his, with all the same around me.
