A Big Little Life

daily trips, now and then on two of them, I carried her down and up the stairs, and the rest of the time, she rode without pulling the bucket-bottom trick on me.
    The surgeon specified that she should walk only a hundred feet to and from each toilet during the first two weeks, two hundred feet during the third week. I tried to explain Trixie’s toilet tao, but I saw by the look in his eyes that he heard the shrieking violins that accompanied the slashing knife in Psycho . I imagined being committed against my will to a mental ward where inevitably I would find myself in the company of X, who would have a list of a thousand people to whom I should send free books and invitations to party at our beach house. I said, “Yes, sir. A hundred feet. No problem.”
    Using a short leash, maintaining a slow pace, I walked Trixie to the neighbor’s yard, an extra fifty feet. Otherwise, she would have tried to hold in her poop for the duration, and eventually we would have had a catastrophe that would make a plummeting elevator with screaming apes on the roof seem like a tea party.
    In the fourth and fifth weeks, we were required to continue confining her, though she was allowed ten- and then fifteen-minute walks. Through the fourth week, Trixie endured these restrictions and indignities with higher spirits than I would have maintained in her situation, but then she fell into a depression. A depressed dog is more terrible than an epically constipated dog building toward a blow. They are by nature exuberant, merry creatures. We could not bear the sight of our elfin Trix so downcast that she spent the day in a sad-eyed listless detachment. Her tail didn’t wag. No squeaking plush toy could engage her. When we rolled a ball to her, she let it bump against hersnout and made no effort to seize it, evidently because she knew that she couldn’t run off with it and tease us into pursuing her. Short Stuff was so disconsolate that even food couldn’t rouse a grin from her, and she ate mechanically, without enthusiasm.
    On Thursday, as we were coming up on our week-five Friday appointment with Trixie’s surgeon, I called him to report on her mental state and to ask him to consider if we might be able to take her out to dinner with us on the weekend. I explained that there was a Swedish restaurant where the owners were dog lovers and welcomed us on their small patio. Trixie was fond of Gustaf, the partner who ran the front end of the business, and when we ate there, we ordered her a serving of little Swedish meatballs. We could park close to the place, lift her in and out of the Explorer, and walk her on a short leash. The patio was small and quiet, with little chance anything would happen there to excite her into injuring herself. Our girl needed a spirit-lifting excursion.
    “That would be a bad idea,” the surgeon said. “You should wait another week, until she’s fully convalesced, and even then you’re going to have to be cautious with her for a while.”
    Late Friday afternoon, when he examined Trix in his office, he spent more than the usual amount of time with her. He determined that her healing was further advanced than usual at the five-week mark. He relented, giving us permission to take her out to dinner that very night.
    Giddy with anticipation, we raced home with her togive her a comb-out and to change our clothes. We couldn’t wait to see her eyes light up when she recognized the restaurant, to see the grin that a dish of little meatballs would inspire.
    I lifted her into the back of the Explorer again, and we set off into an evening full of promise. Trixie was lying in the cargo space, and Gerda was sitting in the backseat, holding the leash so Trixie wouldn’t try to roam while in transit and perhaps be rocked off her feet.
    A smart dog never stops surprising you with its sudden insights and the power of its perceptions. The trip to the restaurant involved four surface streets, a freeway, and another surface street, and we never followed that route to anything else. As I drove the first four streets and the freeway, Trixie lay in her depressive indifference, but when I followed the exit ramp and turned right on the fifth and final surface street, she startled Gerda by scrambling to her feet in the cargo space, pulling the leash taut. She looked out of the windows, left and right—and her tail began to swish.
    “She knows where we’re going,” Gerda said. “How can she know?”
    We were still more than a