A new neighbor moved into the apartment downstairs. She’s been here a week and already I love her.  She looks a little taken aback by the great beams of love I send in her direction whenever we run into each other in the garden. Maybe her instincts about this kind of thing are good and she knows I love her not for what she is, but for what she is not. She is not the old neighbors.

I won’t enumerate their faults. Bad form! They are gone! My memories of them are like the wool dog blanket they left in the yard, slowly disintegrating in the winter rain.

Like everyone else in this neighborhood, the new neighbor has a dog, a giant puppy named Bella. She’s four months old and nearly as big as Truckstop, who regards her with the sedate disapproval of a dowager at a dance.

At first I thought my neighbor had some sort of television addiction. (I guess I’m the sort of person who spends her time worrying about other people’s addictions. I know I’m the sort of person who worries about whether other people are composting a sufficient percentage of their household waste. So go my dreams of glamor and nonchalance.)

Anyway, after a day or two I figured out my neighbor works nights, and when she goes to work she leaves the TV on for the dog, as well as a nightlight, as well as having her friend drop by to make sure everything is ok. And here I am sitting with a draft freezing my knees because Truckstop has fallen asleep in front of the space heater. I know if I move it closer to me she’ll wake up and give me her look of quiet sorrow and walk into the cold bedroom to be alone.

So where am I going with all this about the absurdity of dog love? Two places, I think. Both have to do with decision making, which is something I seem to keep coming back to. Getting a dog can feel like a decision or not. Before I got Truckstop I made a pros and cons list, but the list was both naive and dishonest. “Expensive??” I wrote under cons. “Friend for the cats!” I wrote under pros.

Adopting Truckstop felt as inevitable, as surprising and mysterious, as falling in love with the right person or writing the right book. I think these things don’t have to do with what you decide, but with what you want. What I wanted when I rescued my dog was to be rescued myself, but you can’t command rescue any more than you can command love or inspiration. I don’t mean that I was in danger or despair, only that my life wasn’t living up to my expectations for it, and that the particular, shall we say, machinery of failure, was invisible to me. I thought I wanted things to be different, but what I really wanted was for things to be more. More fun, more sweetness, more idiocy, more exigency, more rules, more risk, more affection. More outside life, less inside life. Dogs bring all those things. I was right to get her. The cats have forgiven me.

Then there is the other kind of pet-related decision making, the small, everyday kind that can feel by turns steadying and oppressive. Do I have enough of the things you need? Can I feed you and treat your ailments? Where will we walk? How much have you eaten today? Will smoked kippers give you a stomachache? Can I let you off your leash?

I like these questions, even when the answer turns out to be No and I have to hustle up to the 7-Eleven in the rain for emergency canned rations, because they are easier to answer than the questions I turn on myself: Am I happy? Am I honest? Am I generous? Am I successful? Am I doing any good?

Truckstop is like a daily puzzle I am always able to solve. Some solutions may be more elegant than others, but rarely does she leave me in doubt for long. I wonder if that’s why it’s so painful when a pet dies — or, I should say, why it can be painful out of measure. The thing that made most sense in your life is swept into the thing that makes least sense. Taking care of an animal requires kindness and routines and almost no imagination. When the animal is gone, there is nothing to replace the body, the body that was the center of everything.