A week ago tomorrow, The Girlfriend — Anne — came home to find that her beloved miniature poodle Rusty had died while she was at work.

We knew this was coming. Rusty was diagnosed with congestive heart failure last fall and he’s been steadily deteriorating since then. But he didn’t seem to be deteriorating that quickly, and when he wasn’t wracked with fits of vicious coughing and wheezing, his behavior was pretty much what it’s always been. Which meant that somehow Anne and I had gotten it into our heads that he was going to last through the summer, that we wouldn’t have to face this inevitable sorrow until the weather turned cold again. But we were wrong… and sometime during the day last Thursday, little Rusty’s heart just… stopped. At least, I hope that’s how it happened. Anne told me that he appeared to be sleeping normally when she unlocked the door to her apartment, with no sign that he’d had to fight to take his final breaths. Again, I hope… well, I hope it was easy for him. He was a good dog; he deserved a painless journey into the unknown country.

I’ve had a lot of pets in my time — dogs and cats, small birds, a crazy one-footed duck, horses, even a couple of rabbits when I was a kid. It’s never easy to lose them, not if you’ve truly lived with them and welcomed them into your family and your home. I’ve seen with my own eyes that animals have intelligence and personalities and emotions every bit as real as our own, and their deaths can be as noble, as tragic, and as wrenching as those of any humans. But after you’ve buried a few of them, well, you just come to understand that the downside of sharing your life with animals is that they don’t last. Unless you have one of those parrots with the 80-year lifespans, you will assuredly outlive your little friends.

Anne, though, has never had a pet before Rusty, didn’t grow up having the same kind of relationship with animals that I’ve known. She’s never had to say goodbye to one before. And this week has been damn hard on her. I like to think I’ve always got the proper words for any occasion, but I’ve never felt so clumsy and utterly inadequate as I have this last week watching her mourn her “baby” and being completely unable to help her through her grief.

To tell the truth, I’ve been more upset myself than I expected to be. Anne has said on more than one occasion that Rusty is — was — as much my dog as hers. I’ve always dismissed that notion as utterly ridiculous. He was her dog, a gift from her mother; he only saw me a few nights a week, whereas he lived with her. I suppose I also dismissed the idea because he was a miniature poodle, an ornamental lap hound, a frou-frou little girly dog that no real man would want to be seen with. I used to feel just like Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets when he gets saddled with the neighbor’s dog. Except… Jack comes to love his little lap hound in that movie, doesn’t he?

Rusty — who I usually called “Gomer” or “Goober,” and don’t ask me why because I honestly don’t know — won me over with reverse psychology, by being gob-smackingly crazy about me. Whenever I arrived at Anne’s apartment, he always went into a virtual conniption, racing around the living room, under the coffee table and back out, weaving in and out of my legs and circling me until I finally bent down to him, whereupon he’d crash to the floor and roll onto his back in a posture so supplicating and needy I couldn’t help but smile, all the while wiggling his stumpy little tail so violently that he could’ve propelled a boat with it. Anne says he loved me like this because I was the first person to give him chocolate. (Yes, I know it’s supposed to be bad for them, get off my back! I never gave him more than just a couple of little morsels.) Personally, I think it’s because I treated him as a fellow male, a genuine dog instead of a cute plush toy (no offense, honey).

We had a routine, Gomer and I; Anne retires fairly early, whereas I am a night owl, so she got in the habit of going to bed while I stuck around her place watching TV or reading. Gomer would start off in the bedroom with her, but then after a few minutes come ambling out to my feet and wait to be acknowledged. When I’d make eye contact with him, that tail would start going again, and then he’d leap onto the couch and lay beside me as long as I stayed. He usually arranged himself so his chin was draped over my thigh. Sometimes, if I was having a drink of something, he’d share it with me.

Last Wednesday, the last time I saw him alive, we followed that routine, same as always. He lay beside me and we watched Futurama together, just a couple of friends chuckling at Dr. Zoidberg’s stupidity. Except… when I got ready to leave, he did something very different from the usual. Instead of returning to the bedroom when it became obvious I was gathering my things, as he always did, he remained on the couch, staring at me. He watched until I was out the door. I remember thinking that was very odd, and a little bit creepy. Now, in hindsight, I’m wondering if it was also significant.

I’m not one to get all spooky or melodramatic about such things, but I can’t help but wonder if he maybe knew what was coming… was maybe even planning on it… and that night he was taking one last, long look at me. Saying farewell, perhaps. It certainly felt that way.

Silly, I know. But Anne was right… he was my dog, too. He was my little buddy, as much as he was Anne’s baby. He had a big, big heart under that goofy, poofy haircut. He didn’t know he was frou-frou; in his head, he was as awesome and manly and wolfish as my border collie, Shadow. And dammit, I did love him. As I let myself out of the apartment last week, I told him what I always told him at the end of the night: “Goodnight, Goober.”

The next evening, I said the same thing to him as I folded his favorite blanket over his face and gently carried him to the car for the last time.