For a long time, I’ve had three dogs – a big red mutt named Rosie, a fancy little toy poodle named Pip and a handsome Shih Tzu named Toby. Toby came to me from a rescue group in Florida. He had had a rough start in life. For some reason, the 94-year-old woman who bought him from a puppy mill mistreated him, scared him and had him kenneled at her vet in a small cage for the most part of his first year of life. He developed seizures and she asked the vet to put the dog, still a puppy, down. The dog’s name was Lucky.

That vet said no. And he called a rescue group who came to take over Lucky’s fate in life from then on. From there, he went to a farm sanctuary mainly in charge of large animal rescues. The man who ran the place was a student in my college composition at the College of Central Florida. When I mentioned in class one day that I was looking for a small dog, he said, “I’ve got a boy who really needs you.” And thus it began, a ten-year love affair with a gold and white Shih Tzu I renamed Toby.

From day one he was an unusual dog with special needs. He had little balance. He would walk right off the bed. He would walk into glass sliding doors if the curtains were pulled aside. I learned to circumvent little disasters and keep him safe. That dog was the kindest little fellow, in love with the cats and tender with children or adults of all ages.

The worst part of Toby’s fate was his seizure disorder. I soon learned all about major seizures in little dogs. Sometimes he had a normal seizure where he just started to shake, fell over and shook for a couple minutes. If we were lucky, he would then shake it off, walk around for about 15 minutes in kind of daze until he recovered, and all would be well. But then we had worse trouble: sometimes he would have seizures so violent that if I didn’t hold on to him, he might leap up and blindly run at full speed throughout the house or yard, smashing headlong into objects. I developed a strategy to put him on a leash when he seized and to hold on tight.

The remarkable thing about Toby was his toughness. He never gave up. When he was sick, he was sick; after his seizure stopped, he would shake it off, literally, and walk himself well, sometimes staggering around the house, leaning against walls, but never quitting until he walked straight once more. That little Shih Tzu had real courage. His struggles often reminded me of how my father argued with Parkinson’s until it finally claimed him; it reminded me of how leukemia struck down my half-sister Shannon at eight but she fought it to the end. That little dog was gallant. Those who argue with disease and fight back hard are gallant. It was traumatic to witness and traumatic for him. But it was inspiring too. It taught me to be calmer in the face of suffering, to respond calmly.

Over the years, the meds, the loving care, the animal friends, the great vets, kept little Toby happy and healthy. He had only a handful of seizures in the past five years. Once we moved back here to Jamestown, he fell in love with the huge backyard and loved to sit out on the deck in the sun. Most of all he was delighted by snow, which he had never encountered. He grew to love it so much that he would run out the kitchen door in the morning, leaping from the doorstop unto the deck and up the hill often into snow deeper than he was tall. He reveled in that snow, leaping and playing like a puppy. I’m so glad he had a winter of snows.

Out of the blue last week, he fell terribly ill. Seizure after seizure befell him. He got the added valium to stop the serious seizures, but over the weekend, he had perhaps 12 seizures of varying types and lengths. Sunday he barked all night, from 10 p.m. until breakfast. I held him in my arms and rocked him, which soothed him for a while. When I took him outside for his morning walk, his front legs splayed. His chin hit the wood. He pulled himself up and limped around the yard with me until his business was done. His eyes looked dull. I don’t know exactly, but something told me he had had enough.

On Monday morning, the kind folks at Moonbrook, particularly Lisa, ushered us in so that I did not have to wait with my dying dog in my arms in the waiting room. Dr. Rappole took Toby from me as one might an infant, with great care. I retreated to my Jeep. I will never forget the sight of that vet coming out of the building carrying my sweet boy and laying him tenderly there on the back seat. That is the kind of medicine that can’t be taught, a special kindness that comes from a lifetime of service to animals and people.

My neighbor Henry used his pickaxe along with the shovel to dig an ample hole for my old Shih Tzu on that late August day. Light spackled the earth. The air sighed. He brought a bucket to overturn and rest upon a dozen times (his wife died last spring. He is 84). He didn’t speak. I offered coffee but he was having none, bent to his task as he does in his own gardens – abundant with lettuce and marigolds in elegant rows. It took an hour or more before he signaled and let me bend awkwardly, slowly, to tuck in the dog. It’s a good grave, Henry, I said, the best, here in the light and shade. He will like it here.

I stood as he let fall earth back into earth. When I returned – later on, alone, I found a perfect raised grave like a cake, rectangular, its sides glazed with dirt the surrounding earth raked into neat lines.

Thus, we honored Toby and put him to rest. We suffer in equal measure to our love, so says C.S. Lewis. And my god, we love our dogs, don’t we? We love them not like people but like family for sure, for they are our companions for years and years. They sleep beside us, they lick our face, they trust us with their lives. Toby, my boy, I whispered, be waiting for me one day.