Before You Get A Dog,

Before You Open The Lunch Menu Or Order That Cheeseburger Or Consider Eating The Cake With The Frosting Intact, Haul Out The Psychic Calculator And Start Tinkering With The Budget.

I Once Heard A Woman Who Had Lost Her Dog Say That She Felt As Though A Color Were Suddenly Missing From Her World: The Dog Had Introduced To Her Field Of Vision Some Previously Unavailable Hue And Without A Dog, That Color Was Gone. That Seemed To Capture The Experience Of Loving A Dog With Eminent Simplicity. I'd Amend It Only Slightly And Say That If We Are Open To What They Have To Give, Dogs Can Introduce Us To Several Colors With Names Like Wildness, Nurturance, Trust And Joy.

But Then The Wine Came, One Glass And Then A Second Glass. And Somewhere During That Second Drink, The Switch Was Flipped. The Wine Gave Me A Melting Feeling, A Warm Light Sensation In My Head, And I Felt Like Safety Itself Had Arrived In That Glass, Poured Out From The Bottle And Allowed To Spill Out Between Us.

Dogs Have Such Short Life Spans, It's Like A Concentrated Version Of A Human Life. When They Get Older, They Become Much More Like Our Mothers. They Wait For Us, Watch Out For Us, Are Completely Fascinated By Everything We Do.

Was He Smart Enough? Introspective Enough? Was It Just Enough To Love Him, Or Should I Attach Myself To Someone Who Seemed Farther Ahead Of Me, Someone Smarter And More Ambitious Than Me, Who'd Be Sure To Carry Me Along Into The Version Of Adulthood I Thought I Should Be Striving For?