Gifts for and of an old dog

She greets me when I walk in the door—everything different and everything the same—as if we had not spent the bulk of our lives hundreds of miles apart.

The grass makes my bare feet itch, and multiple times I’m tempted to lead us back into the house where there is air conditioning and cool tile and the opportunity to cross another item off my to-do list. But Snort is immersed: first in the fallen branches at the edge of the yard, then the overgrown raspberry bush, then the faded mulch, then the scream of a hawk.

I pay attention to these things, too, but there is no properly imagining what it’s like to be my snow dog in this moment. She can barely see anymore, but she doesn’t need to. Her ears swivel and her nose inhales and I take my own deep breath, wondering if the season’s baby bunnies have left behind scent trails or if she’s listening for cars on the road she once darted across or whether she remembers our first winter together, in this very same yard, me curled under the heft of two coats so I could meet her in her world when she wasn’t yet ready to rest in mine.

Back then, a few months after I convinced my parents to adopt the chronically ill husky from our local shelter, I tugged on a young dog’s leash to keep her moving.

Today, I think, it is a privilege to give an old friend the gift of patience.

Earlier this summer another someone I care about lost their dog. How many of them are gone now? I wondered. How many dogs have I gotten to know and love—from afar and up close—who will never again be here with us?

Some had lives inarguably well lived: The sixteen-year-old collie who left peacefully, surrounded by family. The ancient retriever who lay down and simply didn’t rise. My own childhood bichon who spent his last weekend eating pizza between me and my sister on the living room floor.

But it’s not just my childhood pets who are gone anymore, not just the dogs of aunts and uncles and family friends with decades more sand at the bottom of their hourglasses. I mourned those creatures, of course, but it felt like they had existed before me. It made sense for them to leave before me, too.

Now: Two coworkers at my first job out of college cry their way through behavioral euthanasia, and the decision reverberates with so much heartbreak you will never not hear it. A close friend’s adolescent dog gets struck by a car. Too many cancer diagnoses precede final declines. Some pets never come out of seizures not unlike the ones my own Scout has suffered over the years.

The losses no longer make sense.

Snort weaves through garden beds past their midsummer prime, and a splinter lodges in the arch of my foot. She waits for me to pry it out; I wait for her to mark another patch of grass. Soon she’s rolling on her back, belly offered to the sky, imploring me to let my own guard fall.

When I arrived home last week after months away, I met her in the fenced yard. “Hey, snow dog!” I called across the lawn. “Hey, my girl!” she seemed to shout right back. She pounced with an agility at odds with her whitening face. Nearly eleven years old and still play bowing for me—paws on shoulders, nose against cheek, howl echoing my laugh.

I see Snort less than ever, but the ease between us grows.

Befriending fellow animal lovers on social media and meeting up in real life has exposed me to more heartbreak. There are dozens of dogs I never met but felt I knew, who I cheered for, who I loved, who are now gone.

Each time I hear the news I cry. Tears for them and their people. Tears for me and what’s inevitable. Maybe this weight is grief’s cousin twice removed, but they share the same genes.

I think I could spend another decade with Snort—don’t even mention Scout, whose path this snow dog paved first—and be unable to see her loss as anything but devastation, because through all the death and change so far there has been an old friend waiting for me at my parents’ house. Napping in the sandbox my mom made just for her. Chasing Margo, who I imagine we both still see as a gangly puppy, around the tree I knew as a sapling. Carrying her food bowl from the kitchen down the hall to create her own snuffle mat on the carpet.

And greeting me when I walk in the door—everything different and everything the same—as if we had not spent the bulk of the last six years hundreds of miles apart.

She is so alive, right now, stalking things I can’t see in this sunset light. Forget air conditioning and to-do lists. We are so lucky to be exactly here.

Snow dog Snort throughout the years. We found the far-left photo (2015) on a Facebook deep dive investigating her original breeder. The middle (2017) is from our first full year together. The right (2025) was this past spring.

Other notes and news

• We’re rewarding Scout’s road-trip plus friend-and-family-visit adaptability with an extended stay in a deserted national forest this week. Predictably, she is in heaven.

• I am still waiting for the final go ahead to publicly announce a project that’s been taking up a lot of my time!

• I recently discovered Courtney Gustafson, face behind the popular Poets Square Cats social media platforms and author of Poets Square: A Memoir in Thirty Cats that came out this past spring. She (and her book) are lovely!

• I don’t have much else for this section because Wisconsin—where we’ve been since shortly after leaving Portland—always makes me emotional and exhausted and fulfilled and a dozen other things that are conducive to thought and connection but not polished work. Trying to lean in.

In case you missed it

Earlier this month I wrote about serendipity.

I am not spiritual (and yet)