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foulness that surrounded us in the night.
    I nudged Jack awake each morning and urged him up, but as time passed he seemed less eager to be out and about. His joie de vivre seemed to have been depleted. I trotted ahead of him, turning back again and again to spur him forward, in the manner of a legitimate guide, encouraging him toward the coffee shop where traditionally we began each day.
    His hands shook all the time now, and his coffee spilled frequently. His trousers and outer coat were stained beyond hope or repair.
    "You ought take care of that cough," the coffee shop proprietor told him. "Go over to the clinic, they'll give you something for it. Maybe you need a shot of penicillin."
    But he paid no attention. And though I could guide him capably to his usual haunts and back to our riverbank home each evening, I did not know where the clinic was or how to get him there.
    I could only stay by his side, huddle close to him at night to provide him with warmth, lick his hands free of grime, and protect him from nighttime predators.
    "Good boy, good boy," he would murmur to me often, the same words he had used when we met. He scratched behind my ears with his shaking fingers.
    One morning—another cold day, windy and damp—he wouldn't get up, no matter how I nudged and whimpered.
    "I think I'll sleep in today," he told me.
    I wandered down to the river for a drink and then marked a few spots where I smelled interlopers, to remind them that this space was taken. I sat alone in the wind, feeling invigorated by it after the night in our stuffy hovel, and thought about poetry again. In my concern for Jack, I had done no composing for a long time. I began to write a poem in my mind.
O Jack, be strong, be well, my friend!
    Briefly I considered the rhyming possibilities of friend, but the only thing that came to my mind was end. It was such a discouraging thought that it virtually destroyed my creativity. Demoralized, I went back to where Jack lay. His breathing was very ragged.
    I tried my playful pose, rump in the air, head down and tail wagging. It was the introduction to a game we had often played, a game with complicated rules involving ownership of a filthy, much-chewed piece of rope.
    He smiled but declined the invitation. "I need rest," he said, stopping to cough. "Need rest."
    So I nestled by his side and stayed with him throughout the long day. He talked to me from time to time and sometimes his thoughts wandered back to the days of home and family in the past. He seemed to forget that I was there, though his fingers lay against my neck and from time to time stroked my fur.
    When I had lost my mother and siblings so long before, I had felt fear and frustration but at the same time a sense of independence and adventure. Now I was older. Now I knew I could survive alone. But I had a more adult understanding of the value of companionship and what I was losing as I lay there beside my friend and felt him slip away from me.
    I tried again to write a poem, an ode to Jack. Only one word kept coming to me. Why? I said it to myself over and over again, searching for the rhyme that would go with it and turn it into a proper elegy.
    But only one word surfaced, and that was the word that concluded what would be my shortest, and saddest, poem.
    Goodbye.

Chapter 6
    A ND SO I WAS ALONE AGAIN . A pup no longer, but still awash with the yearnings of youth.
    I could have curled beside Jack's body, mourning, and wasted away beside him in that grim setting. I have heard of dogs who do that out of loyalty, and are much admired for their sacrifice; they have statues and monuments erected in their honor. But such statues and monuments are always posthumous. I knew it was not what Jack would have wished for me.
    "Lucky you are, and lucky you'll be!" Jack had said to me often, in better days when his spirits were high and his jug by his side.
Lucky I am! Lucky I'll be!
I wonder what's in store up ahead!
    Quickly, feeling foolish, I corrected