I have a dog of a certain age. I suspected as much in recent months: Buddy’s muzzle is turning white, he makes far less frequent trips upstairs, and he barks at the mailman from the floor, not his feet. But a neighbor confirmed my fears a few days ago, as Chris and I walked in the park across the street without the dog. “Where’s Buddy?,” she asked. It did not help that I replied, “Lying in a hole in the backyard.” It was a true answer — the dog was in his favorite spot, a deep shaded hole under the dining room window — but when I saw my neighbor’s face, I realized why she asked and what she thought that my response meant. When your dog’s absence is remarkable, it may be time to worry.

Anyone who has loved a dog will agree with me: A dog just doesn’t live long enough. The clock ticks from the moment you bring him home. I have been through it before with Harris, a knuckleheaded golden retriever mix. We got him because I believed that if I could raise a puppy, I could raise a child. And Harris exploded into our lives — eating arms off wing chairs, pooping on carpets, running away from home, never quite getting along with Chris. But he also clipped our late 20s/early 30s wings, bringing us home from work at a decent hour, getting us in touch with Friday night TV programming, forcing us out of the house to walk and meet the neighbors, making us care for a life beyond our own. I raised a puppy, and inspired by my good work, our son was born 16 months later, and our daughter was born 19 months after that. (I was terribly naive, by the way. Raising children has been a whole lot harder than raising a puppy.)

I will tell you my favorite Harris story. When Harris was six or seven, Chris decided to make a big pot of chili (with several pounds of meat!) and for the first time, elected to use dried, not canned, beans. Chris didn’t soak the beans long enough, and the chili was inedible. It had to be tossed out. Unbeknownst to me, Chris dumped the chili (with several pounds of meat!) in the lane behind the house, near (but not in) the trash can. At that time, Chris would let Harris out the door about 10:00 every night, and Harris would walk around the park, nap in the yard, and scratch on the door about 45 minutes later to be let in. Except that night, Harris made a detour to the lane behind the house. Harris’ lips were sealed about this little detour.

The next evening, we took a car ride to rendezvous with the kids’ grandparents; we were meeting them about three hours away down the interstate. Harris rode with us. About two hours into the trip, we smelled something terrible, and I asked our son to look in the back of the car, where Harris was. “What’s going on?,” I asked. And our son replied, “Mom, all I see is beans.” And for two more days, all we saw were beans, little projectiles expelled rat-a-tat-tat from the dog’s hindquarters. Chris called him “Beansie” for the rest of his life.

But pounds of dried beans couldn’t deter Harris, and he lumbered on. Until one day, he suddenly went blind. And six months later, he stopped eating. And a few days after that, he stopped drinking. And just before Christmas that year, it became clear that I had to perform one last act of kindness for an old friend.

Which brought Buddy into our lives. He was a rebound relationship, a mail-order bride discovered as I trawled the internet to try to stop crying. I had no intention of falling in love again, and especially of falling in love so quickly, but there he was. He was mine. Handsome, sturdy, freckled, no longer a puppy but a young dog. So I drove four hours to meet him; the heart wants what it wants. Except that my heart had not counted on nearly 100 pounds of untamed and unbridled enthusiasm. As I told the kind woman from the rescue organization that I would have to pass — the dog was just too big and too wild for me — Buddy wrapped the leash around my legs, sat on feet, and looked up at me.

How could I say no? I couldn’t.

Buddy and I, we have had a few misunderstandings — notably, incidents involving cookies, loaves of bread, cheese, and (last night) meatloaf. (Alas, no chili.) As the owner of a golden-St. Bernard mix, I really should be featured in some vacuum ad. (I swear he has three Pomeranians hidden in his fur, undetectable to the naked eye.) Hardwood floors are no match for him, and as he gets older, I swear his barking occasionally sounds like cursing.

But, oh, he is the dog of my children’s childhood, the one that they will tells stories of to their own children and the one that we will laugh about in years to come. They will remember the stories I made up about him when he came to us, where he introduced himself as Buddy Robicheaux of St. Bernard Parish, recounting in a bad Cajun accent life on the bayou. They can’t forget Buddy’s stuffed animal, Baby Buddy, a little dog who looks just like him. We will talk, too, about how his enormous skull housed the smallest brain imaginable, one that hardly seemed capable of powering such a large body. We will talk about how Buddy needed that large body to contain such an immense heart.

And right now, in the here and now, which is all you really have with a beloved dog (or anything you love, for that matter), I will walk him slowly, and brush him easily, and keep his bed soft and clean, and slip him the occasional bite of meatloaf. Buddy may not be very bright, but he was smart enough to hitch his wagon to my star. Buddy knew that there could be nothing better than to spend your days with small pleasures and with people you love. From his humble beginnings, ignored and chained to a tree by college students, to his current cozy arrangements, Buddy proves that it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish. And he isn’t done yet.

ALC