My best relationship is with my dog

The pack of fiery debris is no greater than a dimebag, however thick with the dim stays of what had been a darling pooch. The lady close to me mumbles his name—Poochie—when she takes the pack from a vet tech who can just say that he's too bad. I immediately wish I hadn't heard the name, as though the simple notice of poor destined Poochie will curse my Tova, my German shepherd. She's straightened each of the 80 pounds of herself against my legs, smacking her mouth and yowling.

We are here in light of the fact that Tova started pacing my condo, her tongue shooting out of her nose; she worked her jaws and licked the air. The vet tech who addressed the telephone, the same one who hands Poochie's proprietor a chain and neckline with a heart-molded tag, instructed me to get her immediately: "It could be gastric torsion." Gastric torsion: The midsection, swollen with gas, pulverizes the stomach, squeezes blood from the heart. It could kill my sweet young lady the person who at long last wakes me with head-butts and nestling after the alert has gone off; the person who moves when my key turns in the entryway inside 60 minutes.

An attendant hustles us into a cell-dark exam territory, gets some information about Tova's manifestations and when they began. She squeezes her gloved thumb against Tova's gums; then the vet—a tall lady who swoops silently into the room—manipulates Tova's paunch. All of a sudden, those paint-peeling vapor of canine fart fill the room.

"A terrible instance of colitis," the vet says. "Touchy gut." The main thing the tech hands me is a pill container and a bill. Tova's tail thwaps against the backs of my calves; the weight alleviated, she is back to herself. I ought to be excited, or possibly, quiet. Yet whatever I can believe is that sometime in the future, similar to Poochie's proprietor, I will leave a vet's office with a vacant neckline, with my heart ground up inside a minor plast