My wife and I just went to visit our dog Riley at the vet hospital and the news was rather bleak. It was when the doctor used the word “kidney failure” that we both kind of lost it. I only know that term from conversations I’ve had with medical people about humans, and the outcome has never been good.

Riley’s not that old — eleven in March, which for a Westie is still middle-aged. And he had been fine… mostly. Until he wasn’t. And there is no indication that what ails him is about anything we did or he did — the hand of fate, I suppose. Terriers are prone to liver problems it seems. “You don’t ask why when a person gets cancer,” said the vet.

Some of us don’t. And we do, we don’t really expect an answer. People who don’t have pets don’t really get it. As Riley has gone through his travails over the last week, a number of people have said to me, “That must be costing you a fortune.” I guess if you use money as a yardstick for everything, yeah. But my dog has been a companion and a family member for eleven years now. And a better companion and family member than some who have gone before.

Last night the Grateful Dead’s “Box of Rain” came up on my shuffle, and I was overcome. I don’t have a lot of Dead in my iTunes — I grew up California, and saw them a few times about the time that song was recorded, in the early seventies. I had friends who were Dead Heads (though they didn’t call them that yet) but I was sort of agnostic. I knew there was something different about that song, though; even at age 16 it seemed to be about something — unlike, say, “China Cat Sunflower” which made a lot more sense when you were high. Turns out Phil Lesh’s father was dying of cancer, and Robert Hunter wrote him those words to sing. “What do you want me to do/To do for you to see you through?”

Those without animal companions (and now I understand that phrase that I used to make fun of) will complain: But it’s your dog, not your dad! Your dog never took you to a ballgame and had a long conversation with you about life. Actually, neither did my dad. But my dog showed me the meaning of love, that the giving is the getting, in a way few people ever have and he encompasses what little I know about the subject, from his dry black nose to the tip of his tail.

“Such a long long time to be gone/And a short time to be there.”