For the Love of Dog

I stopped and stretched my calves by holding onto an ancient cement marker that resembles a gravestone. I absently threw a stick ahead on the towpath for Looly, hoping to keep her entertained while I stretched. The stick ricocheted off the ground and onto the ice a few feet from the bank. My dog went down gingerly, curiously, and I seem to remember encouraging her to scavenge for a piece of ice near the shore because she looked thirsty.

As I stretched, I could barely make out the engraved words on that weathered cement marker. Looly was unsure of herself, puzzled over where the water had gone, and she quickly returned to the towpath and meandered into the woods behind the headstone. The perfectly smooth surface of the frozen canal looked like Wollman Rink in New York's Central Park after a Zamboni had buffed its surface snow white, before anyone could shave the ice with skates.

I continued stretching for at least two minutes and looked around for Looly again.

This time, I was surprised to see she had ventured out onto the ice, all the way to the middle, about 30 feet offshore. She seemed to be headed for the other side, where some of the water was unfrozen and, in her canine mind, drinkable.

"Looly! Get back here!"

She turned around and took two steps toward me before the ice broke.

IN THE SUMMER OF 2006, MY FRIEND AND I PULLED UP TO A BREEDER'S HOME IN POOLESVILLE. I had tried every kind of search of every regional animal shelter for six months without being able to find a companion.

I had wanted a dog since Queenie died in 1993. Valeska and I found her, a stray puppy on our doorstep, in Hawaii 17 years before. Named by my fourth-grade sister for Queen Liliuokalani, the islands' last reigning monarch, she was a medium-size collie mix with thick, black fur and a white mane.

Queenie was the most intuitive animal I had ever known. She sensed your mood, especially sadness and grief. When my mother unexpectedly died in July 1993, Queenie, who by then had cataracts, could not hear well and had only several months left herself, would clickety-clack her tired paws across the kitchen linoleum after each emotional phone call that summer. She would bury her nose in my lap until I acknowledged her. If a dog could say, "I'm sorry for your loss," it would be Queenie. Our first dog, Kaiser, a German shepherd puppy, was brought home when I was 4 and Valeska was 2. When our parents were separating and we saw things children should not see, I would open the sliding door to the back yard and lay my head on Kaiser's stomach as he slept.

I had now been without a dog for almost 13 years, my sportswriting jobs in New York and Washington dominating my time and life. One day I walked into The Post and told an assistant editor, "I'm getting a dog." To which the editor replied: "You can't have a dog. You travel too much."

But I knew it was time.

Victoria, the woman who raised and sold the yellow Lab-golden retriever mix puppies with the cute blond eyelashes in Poolesville, steered me away from newborns and said I'd be better off with a three- to four-month-old dog because I lived alone. There were three left in the litter -- two girls and a boy. The boy was rambunctious beyond belief, rolling in mud as soon as we got him out of his pen.