had just appeared as I looked towards the door, an apparition that never knocked. She was as kind and sympathetic as you could possibly imagine, and we sat on the floor for half an hour, the whole family, talking about the dog, discussing his decline and what he probably had - everything, really; at 19, it’s just everything. And then somehow in the course of the conversation we began. When the bag came out Daughter leaned over and hugged him and said goodbye, and when she rose she was fighting it back and her voice was falling apart - - and you find yourself in the bathroom around the corner pulling the tissues out of the dispenser, and there are only four, and of all the days toa bit; instincts fought the verdict, but only for a moment or two. I had my hand on his chest and my hand cupped around his muzzle so he could fade off with the scent of the pack mingling with his last inhalation. The moment he passed was almost imperceptible. He was here; he was gone. Not an atom’s breadth between the two states. I took off his collar and went in the kitchen and opened the door where his bowls sat on a sliding drawer, and put it in his dish. The vet made a paw print in a divot of clay. In death he was the same as he had been before; the posture, the sprawl, the old dog on the mat. I wanted to see