A Big Little Life

padded out of the hallway and into Gerda’s dark office.
    Even if Trixie might be hesitant to bark at a burglar, her sudden appearance would have startled a yelp out of him if he’d been in Gerda’s sanctum. I followed the dog across the threshold and switched on the light.
    She stood at a far corner of Gerda’s desk, still peering up at something, bright-eyed and engaged. Her tail swished, swished.
    A tail is a communications device, a compensation fornot having the capacity for language. Its position and its motion—or lack of motion—can convey a dog’s mood and intentions. With its tail, a dog talks to other dogs, to people, to cats, to all manner of creatures.
    Rarely if ever does a dog wag its tail at an inanimate object. Even the dumbest dog knows the difference between inanimate objects and living beings that might be able to read what it is saying in tail speak.
    Trixie returned around Gerda’s desk, still looking up as if the invisible man had stepped out of a movie and into our home. She remained oblivious of me, responding not at all when I spoke her name and called her to me.
    In the hall again, she paused, grinning up at her make-believe friend. She did a little dance of delight before proceeding next into the office in which Linda worked.
    Here, we went through a repeat of the performance in Gerda’s office, as if Short Stuff were following a visitor on a tour of the premises.
    By the time Trix and I—and whoever—returned to the hallway, Gerda had come out of the master suite to see what was happening. Trixie seemed as unaware of Gerda as she continued to be of me.
    After her paws pranced in place, performing another little dance of delight, our girl proceeded along the hallway to my office. There, we watched as she seemed to accompany someone around the room.
    I am not a guy who sees ghosts or ever expects to see one. If I need a good scare to get my blood circulating, Ijust switch on the evening news and see what the latest batch of insane politicians is up to.
    I would later publish a series of books about a young man named Odd Thomas, who sees the spirits of the lingering dead. But this peculiar moment with Trixie occurred long before that, when ghost stories were not yet on my agenda.
    After leaving my office, in the hallway once more, Trixie stood gazing up at someone about six feet tall, her tail in motion. Then her wagging slowly diminished, stopped. She lowered her head, shook herself, and surveyed her surroundings, at last noticing us. She chuffed and grinned as if to say, Cool, huh? Then she trotted back to the master suite, curled in her bed, and fell asleep.
    As I went room to room, turning off lights, I wondered about the history of our house, whether anyone had died in it. Even if someone had hung himself from the foyer chandelier, I couldn’t believe that he would be haunting the place. What’s believable and right in a work of allegorical fiction isn’t easily embraced in real life by a person of reason. I decided not to worry about it when I realized that my good dog’s tail had been wagging vigorously throughout her encounter; she had been enchanted by what she saw, and she wouldn’t be enchanted by a spirit with malevolent intentions.
    A couple of friends have suggested that Trixie might have been following a moth in flight or some small winged insect that I didn’t notice. As lame as that explanation is,I considered it. But given how long the episode lasted and how many well-lighted rooms were on the tour, no moth or its equivalent could have escaped my attention.
    Besides, Trixie never before or after that event was lured into the pursuit of any insect other than a few fine butterflies on summer days. And those butterfly chases were frisky, leaping exercises in doggy exuberance, nothing like the leisurely walk-around of the second floor that evening.
    A number of people have told me stories about their dogs seeming to see things that humans can’t see, although none of their accounts were similar to mine. I do believe Trixie saw something that she found enchanting and that remained beyond my ken. I’ll never know what it might have been—unless in some other plane of existence I am reunited with her one day, and in that new world, she can talk.
    During the almost eight additional years that we were fortunate enough to have Trixie, she never repeated that performance, and never exhibited any other kind of fey behavior. Nonetheless, I believe the moment was