She lies next to me as I write, her paws tucked neatly under her otter-smooth head, her body pressed against my side. But the arrival last summer of Goose, a black Labrador, means that I too now know what it is to be the object of an animal’s love, and to love her in turn, as I tell her several times a day. When one morning I found his cold, motionless body next to the wheel in which he had whirred away the days, a small furry Sisyphus, I cried for a creature I had never really known. The heart of my hamster, Kramer, was an enigma. Jasper, the ill-advised beagle that followed, loved no one but himself. H ave you ever experienced the love of an animal? Jack, my family’s golden retriever, put on an admirable show of adoring all of us, but we knew his deepest attachment was to my mother, on whose lap he liked to lie, having his silky ears stroked as he slept.
