I brought him home, of course. He can join some old friends under the locust in the upper part of the garden: Fergus, Tigger and Piddy-Pat - all the cats that used to sleep with him. Now, they can sleep together again.

I found Teddie in a dumpster in 1988. Somebody had put him out with the trash. They had also beaten the hell out of him, and he spent several weeks behind the couch in my living room. The vet who treated him estimated his age at three or four, and noted that he would probably always be a little nervous around strangers. He was a small dog, black and tan, (a kind of degenerate Benji of movie fame) wire-haired, with short legs, perky ears and an ingratiating grin - the latter being a toothy affair that always puzzled people. "Where did he learn to do that?" they would say. I haven't any idea, but he used it like a flag of truce on everyone. "I come in peace," he seemed to say. Then, he would roll over on his back and grin some more.

For a while, he was not sure he wanted to stay with me. I was definitely weird, and when we went to town, he became alarmed when I blew the horn, made obscene gestures at other motorists and cursed loudly. Besides, the world was a big place, and although someone had bobbed his tail, he had not been altered. I think Teddie wanted to be a lover. During the first year, I came home most afternoons to find that he was gone - visiting a huge Dalmatian up in the cove. It was a doomed love affair. I always found him staring adoringly at the big dog and grinning. After a month, I had him "fixed" and within a few days, he had become meditative and thoughtful, more interested in intellectual pursuits than carnal affairs. Eventually, he began traveling with me on the storytelling circuit. I placed two large cushions on his seat so he could see out, and he became addicted to hanging out the window. (He once fell out in Highlands, rolling into an autumn ditch filled with leaves.).

I wish I could tell you a story about how he saved my life, snatching me from burning buildings, treacherous waters or homicidal robbers... But, no, he just slept against my shoulder for twelve years and rode 10,000 miles with me. On cold winter nights, he slept in my lap as I read and when he was awake, he spent a lot of time staring adoringly at me as though I were the King of the Universe. So, yeah, maybe he did save my life, in a way.

The Appalachian writer, James Still, once wrote a poem about heaven, noting that if there were such a place, he had no desire to go there unless his dog was going to be there, too. Now, that is a thought. Imagine arriving at the Pearly Gates and hearing that yodeling bark from within, and Teddie, racing out between Saint Peter's legs and rolling on his back and grinning a welcome!