The Darkest Evening of the Year

Nickie would want to spend some time sniffing around the yard—reading the local newspaper, so to speak.
    Instead, upon completion of her business, the dog went directly to the back porch, up the steps, and to the door.
    Amy unlocked the door, unclipped the leash from the collar, stepped into the house, and switched on the lights.
    Neither Fred nor Ethel was in the kitchen. They must have been asleep in the bedroom.
    From the farther end of the bungalow arose the thump of paws rushing across carpet and then hardwood, swiftly approaching.
    Fred and Ethel did not bark, because they were trained not to speak without an important reason—such as a stranger at the door—and they were good dogs.
    She most often took them with her. When she left them at home, they always greeted her return with an enthusiasm that lifted her heart.
    Usually Ethel would appear first, ebullient and grinning, head raised, tail dusting the doorjamb as she came into the room.
    She was a darker red-gold than Nickie, although well within the desirable color range for the breed. She had a thicker undercoat than usual for a retriever and looked gloriously furry.
    Fred would probably follow Ethel. Not dominant, often bashful, he would be so thrilled to see Amy that he’d not only wag his tail furiously but also wiggle his hindquarters with irrepressible delight.
    Sweet Fred had a broad handsome face and as perfectly black a nose as Amy had ever seen, not a speckle of brown to mar it.
    At Amy’s side, Nickie stood alert, ears lifted, gaze fixed on the open hall door from which issued the muffled thunder of paws.
    A sudden drop in the velocity of approach suggested that Fred and Ethel detected the presence of a newcomer. She checked her speed first, and Fred blundered into her as they came through the doorway.
    Instead of the usual meet-and-greet, including nose to nose and tongue to nose and a courteously quick sniff of butts all around, the Redwing kids halted a few feet short of Nickie. They stood panting, plumed tails swishing, with cocked-head curiosity, eyes bright with what seemed like surprise.
    Keeping her own tail in motion, Nickie raised her head, assuming a friendly but regal posture.
    “Ethel sweetie, babycakes Fred,” Amy said in her sweet-talk voice, “come meet your new sister.”
    Until she said “new sister,” she hadn’t known that she’d decided beyond doubt to keep Nickie rather than placing her with an approved family on the Golden Heart adoption list.
    Previously, both kids had reliably been suckers for their master’s squeaky sweet-talk voice, but this time they ignored Amy.
    Now Ethel did something she always did with a visiting dog but never until the meet-and-greet was concluded. She went to the open box of squeeze toys and pull toys and tennis balls inside the always-open pantry door, judiciously selected a prize, returned with it, and dropped it in front of the newcomer.
    She had chosen a plush yellow Booda duck.
    The message that Ethel usually managed to deliver with the loan of a toy to a visitor was this: Here’s one that’s exclusively yours for the length of your visit, but the rest belong to me and Fred unless we include you in a group game.
    Nickie studied the duck for a moment, then regarded Ethel.
    All the protocols were being revised: Ethel made a second trip to the box in the pantry and returned with a plush-toy gorilla. She dropped it beside the duck.
    Meanwhile, Fred had circled the room to put the breakfast table between him and the two females. He lay on his belly, watching them through a chromework of chair legs, tail sweeping the oak floor.
    If you are a dog lover, a true dog lover, and not just one who sees them as pets or animals, but are instead one who sees them as one’s dear companions, and more than companions—sees them as perhaps being but a step or two down the species ladder from humankind, not sharing human exceptionalism but not an abyss below it, either—you watch them differently from the way other people watch them, with a respect for their born dignity, with a recognition of their capacity to know joy and to suffer melancholy, with the certainty that they suspect the tyranny of time even if they don’t fully understand the cruelty of it, that they are not, as self-blinded experts contend, unaware of their own mortality.
    If you watch them with this heightened perception, from this more generous perspective, as Amy had long watched them, you see a remarkable complexity in