We walk every day. Long walks, short walks. The two of us, or with friends and other dogs. Rain, sunshine, wind, snow. At home, I turn to look at you. You open one eye. I push my chair back from my desk. You lift your head and watch me. I leave the room to pour another coffee or rattle around in the kitchen. You lumber in behind me. You’re growing old. At the end of the day, you join me on the sofa and I massage your sore joints until it’s time to sleep.
Every tomorrow, we walk out together. Some days, I think about a passage in a book I read. The author writes of a child who says she needs to be alone and then takes her golden retriever for a walk.
“What she was, I can never know: how can one penetrate the soul of a dog?” wrote Colette Audry.
Yet I feel your thick coat as it brushes my hand. I let go of the impulse to talk. You slow down for me. For your joints. I make peace. You move ahead a few paces, then glance back, as if to check that I am keeping up. That I go where you have gone.
A few paces. And again.