The end always begins, as it should, with a tragedy. A case of the drips, perhaps. Maybe a gambling problem, or drinking. Really any addiction works fine. Or illness. Or death--I swear to God one out of every six people knows someone whose significant other has died sometime within the last two years.

But death is not always the case. Sometimes it ends with a dog bite. A dog bites the hand of a child and you can throw away three years of relationship development. For example, say a child, who despite the lack of legal documentation insists on calling you “uncle,” is at your house one evening and you tire of playing catch and instead manipulate the child into watching your favorite television program, thereby leaving the child pretty much completely unattended, and at some point during the one hour program the child receives a dog bite worth of twenty-seven stitches and a lemon sucker.

More context? At some point during the television program the child, Louie, figures out that despite what his older and usually reliable uncle has told him, five-year old kids do not make up a hefty percentage of the marketing demographic for legal dramas. Realizing this, Louie, who is already midway through a crash course in baseball philosophy taught by his not yet legally binding uncle, figures he would be much better off if he located the baseball his uncle has carelessly left sprawled on the living room floor and at the very least spent the remainder of the program working it into his baseball mitt--just like his uncle taught him. So little Louie slips away from the couch, walks to the ball and picks it up. Holds it, squeezes it, looks over his shoulder, and is assured his uncle is completely engrossed in legal filigree. And then what does little Louie do with this holiest of all objects, a birthday present from his treasured uncle, a baseball he has been told to play with only outdoors and certainly not near any of his aunt’s most delicate possessions? Little Louie tosses the ball from the living room into the kitchen and tears off after it, uncle now aware something at his left appears to be happening, but will wait for a commercial break to turn his head.

Insert dog. Rachmaninoff, a beautiful ninety-pound German Shepherd, often referred to as Rocky for short. A dog that normally sleeps at the feet of his master while his master watches television. A dog that has laser accurate radar when it comes to unwanted objects, most specifically carnivores, nearing his food bowl. A dog that is stealthy, a champion, can stalk a young boy from the living room into the kitchen without so much as dragging a paw across the carpet so as to alert a responsible adult to the nearing crisis. A dog with patience, most likely watched the boy kick the ball around for a while before the boy went for the food and the dog went for the boy’s hand. A dog that loves, cuddles, licks, and slobbers. A dog that rubs his cold nose against your cheek when you are sad, that barks and wags his tail when Amaranta is happy and dancing in the early morning. Our Rocky, mine and Amaranta’s, the dog we raised together. Who, as a puppy, shit worms in the backyard while Amaranta held a flashlight, and I scooped the shit up with a plastic grocery sack so that the worms would not infest the backyard. A dog that Amaranta and I rushed to the veterinarian simply because he did not eat one morning. Wasn’t hungry, the vet said. A dog that once slept tucked against Amaranta’s neck, half his body covered in her thick, brown hair, so quiet and peaceful with the sound of their breath and Amaranta’s closed eyes that I sat down and watched them sleep for an hour. Their bodies expanding and retracting. The two of them, Amaranta, who spends twenty-hours a day buried in a medical book, and the puppy, who at best kicks around his stuffed cow for fifteen minutes before collapsing in exhaustion. Lying still and quiet, a bundle of precious life simmering and restoring, Amaranta like a little girl, the puppy whimpering over a nightmare only to be hushed by the touch of Amaranta’s soft hand. Healing in her sleep she was.

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