Free Dog Crazy by Meg Donohue Page A

like to continue to the park entrance now to check if the dogs look healthy, but something stops me. It’s the crowd, I realize. What if the panic hits me when I’m in the middle of it? Just the thought of falling to pieces in front of so many people makes my skin prick with dread. Better to stick to quieter areas where I have a chance of keeping my anxiety under wraps.
    Baby steps, I remind myself, and turn down a path that hugs the southern edge of the park. The path rises and falls, offering glimpses of the city on one side, the park on the other. There is beauty in every direction, and I try to look up every so often before dropping my eyes back to the path ahead.
    When I finally allow myself to turn toward home, I immediately search the sky for a glimpse of Sutro Tower, the huge red-and-white transmission tower that looms atop Mount Sutro. There it is, high above Cole Valley, looking like an upside-down claw from one of those arcade games, poised to snag the clouds. Lourdes once told me that San Francisco needs the three-pronged tower because the city’s many hills block reception, and I remember from my early weeks here that from just about anywhere in the city’s maze of streets you can still see that tower. It’s comforting to know that no matter how far I walk, I can look for it and it will show me the way home.
    B ACK IN MY apartment, Giselle laps up the water and then, panting, wanders into my bedroom. I stand at the kitchen counter, chewing vitamin C and listening to the sounds of her poking around in the other room. When she doesn’t come back, I follow her.
    I find her standing in front of my bedside table, sniffing the box that holds Toby’s ashes.
    Yes, I keep Toby’s ashes next to my bed. Where else should I put them? In a drawer? On the mantel? There’s really no right place to put a dog’s ashes, is there? Anyway, I live alone; I’m the only person who has been in my bedroom since I moved here.
    During our third week in San Francisco, I borrowed Lourdes’s car and drove up the coast with Toby. Those first few weeks in San Francisco had been wonderful. There’s something to be said for starting over in a new city after a breakup. I was happy. The weeks had passed in a whir of activity—tackling the logistics of setting up a private practice, decorating the apartment, catching up with Lourdes and Leo, and finally getting to know their children better. I was looking forward to a spell of quiet that afternoon with Toby, just the two of us.
    A couple of hours north of the city, I pulled the car into the parking lot of a small beach. I pushed my vertigo aside as Toby and I made our way slowly along a narrow trail that zigzagged down a steep hill and deposited us on a crescent of sand tucked against the cliffs. The ocean roared with waves far bigger than the little East Coast swells we were used to, and the sky was bright turquoise. We were the only ones on the beach. Toby was usually wild in open spaces like beaches, racing around and doing his irritating barking-at-water thing, sending sand flying out from below his paws. But that day, when I sat in the sand and took off his leash, he just trotted a few feet ahead of me and lay down and gazed out at the waves. I was surprised, and amused, and I let him be. His body was still but his neck was long, his ears perked and alert as he looked out at the sea. It was as though he was mesmerized.We both sat like that for a stretch of time, separate but not alone, taking in the enormous beauty of this place we found ourselves in.
    I realize now that his regal calm that day might have been an indication of the illness rapidly spreading through him. But at the time it just seemed to me that he was awestruck, and grateful, and experiencing one of those fleeting moments of true peace that are available to each of us if we are wise enough to sense their presence, step into them, and breathe.
    I plan to bring Toby’s