A Big Little Life

react—and is not expected to react—to any of this, but listens and wonders. Dogs swim through a sea of human speech, listening attentively for words they recognize, patiently striving to interpret what we say, although most of it is and always will be incomprehensible to them. No human being would have such patience. Counting the many commands she had been taught when in training to be an assistance dog and all that she had learned on her own—cookie, chicken, walk, duck, stepstool, oil, painting, restoration, electromagnetism—her vocabulary was at least a hundred words. It would more than double over the years. This got me thinking…. The recognition that words have meaning, the desire to remember them, the intention to act on those that are understood—does all of this lead to the conclusion that the dog also yearns to speak?
    On that January night, because Trixie had been an undiluted joy during the previous four months and had already been a force for positive change in me, I said, “You’re not just a dog. You can’t fool me. I know what you really are.”
    As if in response, she raised her head, eased back slightly, and regarded me with what might have been concern. Golden retrievers have versatile brow muscles that allow them a wide range of facial expressions. She never before responded to me in this fashion, and I was amused to interpret her look as meaning, Uh-oh, somehow I’ve blown my cover.
    “You’re really an angel,” I continued.
    To my surprise, she scrambled to her feet as if in alarm, ran down the hall, turned, and stared back at me. Muscles tensed, legs spread for maximum balance, head lifted, ears raised as much as a golden can raise them, she seemed to be waiting for what I might say next.
    I’m seldom speechless. Trixie’s behavior, which seemed to be a reaction to my words, as if she understood every one of them, raised the fine hairs on the nape of my neck and left me mute.
    Intrigued, I got to my knees, wondering what she would do next, but she continued to watch me intently when I rose to my feet.
    For a minute or two we studied each other from a distance of twenty feet, as though we both expected something of consequence to happen. Her tail did not wag. It wasn’t lowered as it would have been if she had been the least fearful. It was a perfect plume, as still as if she had stepped outside of time, where nothing could move her or even one hair upon her, nothing except her own will.
    “Trixie?” I finally asked, and when I spoke, she retreated another ten or fifteen feet and turned again to face me in the same expectant stance as before.
    This was not a dog who wanted solitude or even distance. The closer she could be to us, the happier she appeared. When I was writing, she would sometimes slink under my desk and curl herself into the shape of an ottoman, and she sighed with pleasure when I rested my stockinged feet on her. With Gerda even more than with me, this sixty-plus-pound creature behaved like a lapdog, most content when embraced.
    This was the first and last time she wanted distance from me. As we stared at each other, I began to realize that regardless of what Trixie’s behavior implied, if it implied anything at all, I should not pursue this matter further if only because it disturbed her. Besides, I was dealing here with the ineffable, the pursuit of which offers endless frustration but no reward other than the thrill of the chase.
    I sat on the hallway floor, my back to the wall, legs straight in front of me, and I closed my eyes. The nape of my neck tingled for a while, but when the fine hairs stopped quivering, Trixie returned to me. She snuggled against my side. Putting her head in my lap, she allowed me to rub gently behind her ears and stroke her face.
    Later, I told Gerda about the incident, but of course she could make no more of it than I could. We don’t have paranormal experiences or go to psychics. We don’t even read our daily horoscopes.
    I write fiction for a living. I could spin a score of intriguing scenarios out of this one spooky moment with Trixie, but none would be as strange as the truth, if it could be known in this instance. Truth is always stranger than fiction. We craft fiction to match our sense of how things ought to be, but truth cannot be crafted. Truth is, and truth has a way of astonishing us to our knees, reminding us that the universe does not exist to fulfill our expectations.
    Because we are imperfect beings who are