Still, I'll take it. Jean and I are finally sleeping in the same room again. First time in at least a week. It's just that by the end of each work day now, I'm plum tuckered out. Tonight was one of those nights. I'm taking a long weekend – I don't go back to work until Tuesday – so I had tons of stuff to do before I could leave my office. I got home sometime after 6:30, ready to collapse into a chair in front of the television so I could hold Colette (allowing Jean to do all the things she wants and needs to do) while doing as little as possible myself.

Except that Jean was waiting for me at the door. Pasta wasn't well: he'd hardly moved all afternoon and was shaking uncontrollably in his hind legs whether he was sitting or standing. He could move, he just didn't want to. Not even to get the ball.

Almost exactly five years ago I had another dog, Mr. Saunders. He was a cocker spaniel too. He was also my first and best dog. Unfortunately one of the vertebrae in his back ruptured, severing his spinal cord and rendering him unable to move or control his bladder or bowels.

I can still remember finding him that February morning. He was sitting at the bottom of the stairs (he wasn't allowed upstairs) in a puddle of feces. He couldn't move out of it. He was terrified. What makes me feel worse even today is that I had yelled at him just before going to bed the night before because he'd crapped on the floor in the study. In retrospect it was probably the beginning of his disc rupturing, but I couldn't have known it.

Not knowing that he'd lost his back legs, I called him to me. He forced himself forward, dragging half of himself to me. I freaked out, realizing at last that something was seriously wrong.

The rest of that day is a blur for me. I drove him to the emergency veterinary clinic in the Fan district. They told me that he had lost all feeling in his back legs. They even tried squeezing his toes so hard that even if they were even a little alive, he'd respond. No luck. I went to at least two other doctors offices that day, hoping and praying that there was something that could be done for him.

There was nothing. He was paralyzed and would never be able to walk or control himself ever again. I made the only decision I really could, and we put him to sleep on February 28th, 1994, just a few days before his fourth birthday. I still see his little body collapsing on the metal table in the vet's office after they gave him the shot. He had been so nervous, and all I could do was keep repeating to him that everything was okay, everything was okay.

My little friend.

So when I arrived home tonight and Jean told me Pasta's back legs were trembling and he was moving around the house as little as possible, there was no question. I picked him up, put him in the car, and returned to the emergency vet clinic in the Fan.

Pasta was tentative the whole ride there, nuzzling his head under my arm each time I shifted gears. I talked to him calmly and carried him from the parking lot around the corner into the clinic. They still had me on file from Saunders' visit.

The moment I put Pasta down, he seemed a changed dog. He was excited by all the smells in the place. I told the woman checking us in that I was fairly sure I was overreacting, but since I lost my first dog in a way that seemed similar, I wasn't going to let this go and find out in a day there was something I could have done.

After a few minutes of completing some paperwork Pasta and I went into one of the examination rooms. A doctor came in shortly, and proceeded to poke and prod Pasta. Everything checked out of course. The doctor felt that he must have hurt himself somehow, and that he should be restricted for a few days to keep from making the injury any worse. That was it.

The price of fear? $58.00. But you know what? I paid it gladly and I'll pay it again if it can give me just a few more years with my friend Pasta.