It’s interesting that my neighbor Irv, who saw dogs so differently, knew all the kids and people on the block and could recite the family history of each house until about a decade ago. Now few of our neighbors can name more than a handful of people who live on the street. They have little to do with local government, and vote sporadically, at best. In the evenings and on weekends, they go their own ways. Their kids are repeatedly warned about talking to people they don’t know.

There’s a vulnerability about Rose, even a sweetness in her eyes, but there’s no mistaking her priorities. Smart, tough, determined, she is essential, but rarely the dog that people melt over or want to take home. Yet she’s a great dog.

Where does it begin this sense of being the Other?

Whenever I hear people clucking about the decline of civilization, what’s wrong with young people, how vulgar popular culture is, how confusing and frightening they find the internet, alarms go off. I know I’m around somebody whose hinges are rusting. Death will be bad enough, but for me, this early harbinger is more fearsome, because a part of one’s spirit and openness and ability to learn and grow disappears.

Our task, wrote Einstein, is to liberate ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

Dogs and other animals – goats, donkeys, cows, a grumpy rooster – continue to change my writing life.

Americans have an extraordinary love-hate relationship with the rich culture they’ve created. They buy, watch and read it even as they ban, block and condemn it.

If you’re going to love animals and have a life with them, the odds are you’re going to lose them. It’s helpful when you get a dog to accept the fact that this dog is not going to be with you your whole life.

We are human, and we suffer, and unlike the animals on the farm, we are self-aware, and we know that we suffer, and it doesn’t hurt more or less if God caused it or could stop it, at least for me. I am definitely of the school that believes God has bigger stuff to worry about than me.

Animals have come to mean so much in our lives. We live in a fragmented and disconnected culture. Politics are ugly, religion is struggling, technology is stressful, and the economy is unfortunate. What's one thing that we have in our lives that we can depend on? A dog or a cat loving us unconditionally , every day, very faithfully.