For five days we climbed, played fetch, swam in creeks and lakes, played fetch some more. I never became a dog-owner because Birkie insisted on taking a crap once he was on Los Angeles Department of Water and Power land. Birkie was never short on pure loveliness, he never begged for food or climbed on the furniture. At night he slept at the foot of our bed where we could hear him dream.

In case I was accused of dog-nabbing, I put up Found Dog signs at the grocery store and gas station. Finally, on the sixth day, in an effort to do right and perhaps get Birkie some shots and a license for his collar, I took him to the dog shelter. As it was someone had called, someone who knew his name, someone who would be right over to pick Birkie up. I threw a stick across the dirt parking lot of the shelter and then sat down waiting for Birkie to run back to my side. He liked to be petted on his large cheeks, then across the top of his head between his floppy ears. I sadly obliged, while looking down the road for his owner to show.

When the owner arrived in a Ford pick-up, Birkie didn’t even move when his rightful name was called. In fact, even though it’s only been a few dog-less weeks, I can’t recall what the man called his dog. But eventually Birkie was coaxed in the back of the truck. He didn’t even look back as they drove away. I went back in the shelter and the two women in the office recognized my sorrow. “We’ve got a few really nice dogs up for adoption,” one of them said. They trotted out some big dogs, the size of Birkie. “Let me think on it,” I said.

And I did. But I was unable to get Birkie out of my thoughts. Friends come and go, some for a few weeks, some for decades. It’s the sad truth of it all. Birkie had visited for a little less than five days, but in that time I could feel the earth going around the sun and had smelled the sagebrush with more clarity and perhaps canine clairvoyance than I had ever mustered. To me Birkie will always be lost in the sense of the J.R.R. Tolkien saw, “Not all those who wander are lost.”  Only now I find it necessary to stop myself from walking around the neighborhood in the chance I discover Birkie tied up with crusty bit of rope; in case I find myself hugging a wandering friend in someone else’s backyard.