When Riley first joined our household fourteen and a half years ago, he was so small I took to carrying him about when we went out somewhere, over my shoulder in a small camera bag with a stiff bottom that I tucked a small blanket into. From that vantage point he would look out into the world he was being introduced to, whether the venue happened to be somewhere we happened to be shopping at, or in a natural setting along a woodland trail.

During one of his first introductions to the ravine, with Riley secure in that little pouch, we came across a small dog we'd never before seen and its companion, also never before seen in the ravine. The woman was affable and the little dog which she said was almost two was seemingly everywhere at once. What was remarkable about that little rascal of a dog was that it resembled what one might think of as a miniature werewolf.

Her name was Rachel, a name suffused with biblical reference, a gentle name to be ironically conferred upon a little dog whose whitish-grey hair stuck out at odd peaked angles, whose ears were stiffly upright, eyes slightly crossed, muzzle with the appearance that it could snap and break bones with ease; a perception of vision that could not possibly be more at odds with the personality of a friendly, happy little dog.

Eventually, on the odd occasion when we might encounter the pair during a ramble in the ravine, Rachel taught Riley the joys of scrambling down banks into the muddy atmosphere of a ravined rivulet, of rolling in rough grass, of tumbling about together in the pure joy of puppyhood. And although Riley considered Rachel a dear friend, their times together were few; while we roamed the woods in the ravine daily, they did so infrequently.

And yesterday we came face to face with someone who seemed familiar but we couldn't quite place her until we recalled the vision of a rollicking little grey dog with a demented aspect. When we asked, although the answer seemed obvious enough, it was to be told that Rachel had died four years earlier, a reality that could not be conveyed to Riley who would have been delighted to see her after such a long absence from his life.