Yesterday I went to a boutique pet store to buy my grand-dog Nellie a stuffed toy for Christmas. Next to the toy display stood a black, brown, and white, medium-sized dog. The dog looked at me and wagged its tail. Its big brown eyes were merry and its toothy smile was bright, so I asked its people, “May I pet your dog?”

“Of course,” said the woman, “she loves that.”

After petting the dog, I turned to the toys. I wanted one that didn’t squeal, squeak, groan, moan, or crackle because when my grand-dog sinks her teeth into one that makes noise, she is relentless.

The tri-colored dog turned with me. She watched me select toy after toy and squeeze it. The dog and I began a conversation.

“This one’s too high pitched,” I said to her.

“It sounds good to me. I like that toy,” the dog’s eager face said.

“This one makes a low noise,” I said. “It might work.” I kept it in my hand instead of hanging it back up.

“It sounds good to me. I like that toy, too.” The dog’s eager face filled with anticipation. She wanted a toy, but she was too well-mannered to do more than drop a hint. (My grand-dog is a Vizsla and she would have reached up and grabbed the toy. She’s not rude, mind you. She’s very, very sweet, but she’s a Vizsla. They’re impulsive. They’re enthusiastic. They’re larger than life.)

I tested toy after toy, telling the dog that each one was too loud, and each time the dog looked at me and the toy in my hand and answered, “It sounds good to me. I like that toy.”

I looked at the dog’s kind face. “My grand-dog will drive me crazy with these toys,” I told her. I decided even the toy that made a low noise was too noisy, so I hung it back up. I walked around the back of the display to see if there were more toys.

At this point I realized I’d been talking with the dog for several minutes while her owners looked at products on a display rack opposite the stuffed dog toys. Other than asking for permission to pet their dog and telling them I had a dog at home, I’d ignored them. It occurred to me this might be considered rude. It occurred to me that carrying on a conversation about noisy dog toys with a dog I’d just met might be considered strange. But in my defense, the dog was a good conversationalist.

I turned to look at the dog’s mother. “I guess you might think I’m a bit strange, standing here in a store having a conversation with your dog.”

“Not at all.” The woman smiled warmly. “I talk to her all the time. I would think it strange if you didn’t want to talk to her.”

Nice of her to say. I talk to my dog all the time too.

The owners and their dog moved on. And I wondered if they had stayed longer than they had wanted, thinking it rude to interrupt their dog’s conversation with a lady who was trying to find the right toy for her grand-dog.

I did find the right toy for Nellie. A nice clerk helped me find the only toy in the store without a squeaker. It looks like a cross between a squirrel and a beaver. Maybe it’s a woodchuck. Doesn’t matter. It’s nice looking, well-made, and quiet.

I didn’t forget about my dog, Ziva. She’s not interested in toys, so I bought her two fancy-schmancy cans of dog food: Venison and Lentil Pâté and Lamb Recipe in Bone Broth. Both sound as though they should have come with a footman from Downton Abbey to dish up her food.

A heart without a pet is just an empty cockle shell.

Ziva is pretty much back to her old self this morning.

Yesterday morning Ziva met Dr. F, a new vet, and Ziva loved her immediately, but she loves everyone. I really liked the new vet, too; although, I refrained from leaning my head against the vet’s leg and nuzzling her.

I had been nervous about having a stranger examine Ziva because she already has two other vets, Dr. J. and Dr. M., who treat her. I wanted Ziva to see one of the vets who currently care for her. But now we have three wonderful vets to choose from, which might make it easier to get an appointment when we need one.

From Tuesday, when I made Ziva’s vet appointment, until Thursday, when Ziva saw the vet, she had improved. However, I had videos on my phone to show the vet, so she could see how poorly Ziva had been moving in the previous days. The vet examined Ziva and determined that she most likely had a soft-tissue injury that needed to heal. The vet recommended increasing Ziva’s Librela shots for her osteoarthritis from every four weeks to every three weeks, giving her a three-to-five-day course of an anti-inflammatory medicine, and monitoring her movements.

Monitoring Ziva’s movements is the tricky part. Because when she feels better, she likes to run up the side of the house. She likes to run out to the front yard and prance around while she barks at a squirrel scrambling up a tree or a passing dog or the neighbor who is once again for the zillionth time mowing his lawn. Right now, I cringe when I watch her do these things, so I’ve been taking her outside on her leash. She’s limited to a couple of walks a day, but only around the block, which suits her just fine. And if I take her in the car, I put her on the leash and walk her to the back passenger door, so she can’t dance, prance, and spin in happy circles because she’s excited for a ride.

The reality is that while Ziva’s doing much better, going forward we’ll have to take care with her by limiting her exposure to situations where she could reinjure herself. But we’ll also have to make sure she is living the best life she can. This includes making sure she moves because “move it or loose it” applies to dogs too.

Yesterday, after her rough morning, Ziva had a slightly better afternoon. She still slept most of the time, but when she did get up, she moved better, slowly and cautiously, but better.

I’ve become an expert at watching Ziva’s movements and her gait. I’ve been doing it for five or six years now. We walk a lot, so I’m able to note how she moves from day to day, week to week, and month to month. In 2017, I read Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Dr. Atul Gawande. He wrote that if doctors know what they are looking at, they can tell a lot about an older person by the way he or she walks. When I worked at a bookstore, medical students sometimes came in with a list of suggested reading (beyond medical texts) given to them by a professor. I always suggested they add Gawande’s Being Mortal to their stack because it deals with aging and death, topics about which they would receive little exposure to in medical school. They usually bought the book because I was able to convince them that geriatric and end-of-life concerns were going to figure in their practice — regardless of their medical specialties. And so, I watch Ziva’s gait and movements. I note the changes over time, and I can describe them to the vet in a manner that impresses her and helps her to treat Ziva. I did the same with Cabela, Ziva’s sister, as she aged.

When my husband and I came home from the grocery store yesterday afternoon, Ziva met us at the door and wagged her tail. I realized how much I take her incessant tail wagging for granted. We made a big fuss over her swirling tail and gave her a treat. It might sound like Ziva gets a lot of treats, and she does. Most days she eats her breakfast and supper too, as long as we doctor it up with good stuff (eggs, boiled chicken, a bit of canned food), what my husband likes to call “frosting.” Ziva isn’t overweight. Rather when we go to the vet’s, I hold my breath and hope she hasn’t lost another half-pound. When she weighs the same as she did the last time, I joyfully exhale.

Around three o’clock, while she appeared to be sound asleep, I whispered to my husband that I was going for a walk. Unbeknownst to me, while I got ready, Ziva got up, walked to the back door, and waited for me. (There is nothing wrong with her hearing or her ability to look like she’s in a deep sleep when she’s actually keeping tabs on her people.) She looked at me with big pleading eyes — the ones that say: You’re surely not going without me?

In the morning we’d agreed that Ziva should have lots of rest. No car rides, no walks, no extended outside time. But she stood at the back door, telling she felt better and wanted to walk. I worried she might tweak her injury if she stumbled. But I kept my comments to myself because she didn’t want to hear about my fears. She had her own. And even though she was hurting, she wanted some say in how she was going to get better. In that moment, I weighed her need for a small outing against the chances she might aggravate her injury. I decided her emotional well-being was important to her healing.

When I was nineteen and living with my grandparents, I got very sick. I was on bed rest for two weeks. Finally, I started to feel better. I wanted to do something other than lay in bed. I hadn’t been out of the house since coming home from the hospital, but I was weak. I called my mother, and I started crying as I explained how I felt. She told me to get out of the house for a bit, that if I felt like going out, it was a sign I was getting better. I called my girlfriend, who said that she and her boyfriend were going to a softball game, and they would come and pick me up, take me to the game, then bring me home. My grandmother and I had a big argument about my going out. Of course, she was worried about me. But I didn’t back down. I finally told her, “I called my mother this morning, and she told me I could go out for a bit.” I felt so much better when I returned home a couple of hours later; although, I did need a nap. My grandmother, noting my happy face, said, “It was so nice of your friends to take you out and bring you back.” I believe she was also relieved I hadn’t overdone it.

While I grabbed Ziva’s harness and fastened it around her, I thought about my grandmother and our argument. I explained the rules to Ziva. We would walk down through the grass instead of down the stairs, and our walk would be slow and short. We walked less than one city block, but Ziva went to the bathroom and sniffed a few of her favorite spots along the way. When I announced it was time to go home, she happily turned around. After we got home, she curled up for a big nap, but she had enjoyed herself. After her nap, she wasn’t any worse for the walk, but she didn’t want her after-dinner walk.

This morning Ziva is moving a little faster and with more confidence, but still carefully. And her tail wagging, while not back to normal, tells me her pain has eased a bit.

A little over a week ago, my dog, Ziva, slipped on the wooden stairs that run along the side of my house. She didn’t just lose her footing, she fell down. When she got back up, she could hardly put any weight on her back left leg. She’s thirteen and a half years old, so injuries are disconcerting.

At the time Ziva fell, we were headed out for a walk with my four grandkids. I thought I’d have to carry Ziva back in the house, but after she took a few steps, her leg worked better, but walking wasn’t easy for her. I figured we’d just walk across the road and let her tinkle, then go back home. But the more she walked, the better her leg worked. She resisted my efforts to turn around and go home, making it clear she wanted to keep walking, just like an athlete shaking off a momentary ache before getting back in the game. We completed our short walk, and Ziva did well for the rest of the day.

Then on Sunday, she must have done something that tweaked her injury. She likes to prance and dance around when she’s excited, especially if she’s outside and we’re getting ready to go for a ride or if she sees a dog walking down the street. She was a little gimpy Sunday evening, but not too bad, and she still insisted we go for her after-dinner walk. When she woke up on Monday, she was back to her old self.

But on Monday afternoon, she tweaked her injury again, probably getting out of the van. Because not long after her ride to the post office with us, she once again struggled to walk around. She was obviously in pain. She ate supper, but she wanted nothing to do with her after-dinner walk. At first I thought she wanted to walk because she stood by the back door. So, I put her leash on, and we walked onto the back deck. But she refused to move more than a few feet beyond the back door. We went back in the house, and she stood in front of the microwave and looked up at her treat dish. Her message to me: I walked a few feet, now I want my treats. Happy that she had an appetite, and that she still enjoyed bossing me around, I gave her a half dozen small crunchy treats. After she realized she wasn’t going to get anymore, she went to sleep on her bed in the family room, where she stayed for the rest of the night.

Tuesday morning when Ziva woke up, she was her cheery, tail-wagging self. Her walking was back to normal, and she was interested in breakfast and her morning walk.

But Tuesday afternoon after prancing and dancing in the yard, Ziva reinjured herself. And this time was worse than the other times. She was in pain. She struggled to walk. Anytime she got up from the floor, she stood still for a couple of minutes, as if waiting to see if she could trust her leg to move forward and keep her upright. She wouldn’t wag her tail.

I called the vet’s office, and because there was a cancellation, I was able to get Ziva an appointment for Thursday morning. I couldn’t believe our good luck. It’s so hard to get a short-notice appointment at my vet’s because they have so many patients and not enough staff. A pet has to be in dire condition, and Ziva’s injury doesn’t meet that standard. Even the emergency veterinary hospital, which is open nights and weekends, wouldn’t want me to bring her in because they wouldn’t consider her critically ill. They would tell me she could be seen by her regular vet. And her regular vet would tell me that I could take her to the ER vet hospital when it opened. It’s a classic Catch-22 moment when this happens. So much so that it gives me pause about getting another dog.

On Tuesday night after her supper, Ziva never asked for a walk or her post-walk treats. After I took her outside to go to the bathroom, she climbed into her large, cushy bed on the family room floor and went to sleep. Throughout the afternoon and evening, she never once wagged her tail. I was glad she had eaten supper and that she drank water, but I wanted to see her poofy tail twirl in the adorable circles it makes when she wags it.

I tried to walk without Ziva. I walked down to the road and started to go left, but that’s usually the way Ziva and I go, which made me sad. Then I discovered I had my T-shirt on inside out, which distressed me. I wondered if anyone would notice because I knew if I went inside the house to turn it right-side out, I wouldn’t come back outside. I decided to walk the other direction, but I couldn’t do that either. I was too sad without Ziva. There are times I have walked without her, but that’s because it was too hot for her or because she was taking a big nap and I didn’t want to wake her. This time was different because she wasn’t able to come with me. I went back inside and turned my T-shirt right-side out. I picked up a book and sat down on the couch. While reading, I kept looking up to watch Ziva as she slept, hoping she was healing.

This morning Ziva was only slightly better. In pain and not trusting her leg, she walked slowly. But before she went outside to the bathroom, she wagged her tail and asked for a treat. My husband and I both gave a small cheer while Ziva ate her treats.

Today there will be no walks or car rides. Ziva won’t go outside unless someone is with her to make sure there is no prancing and dancing. After we see the vet tomorrow, we’ll know more, but continued rest will probably be part of the treatment. We are keeping an eye on her. She can hop up on the couch or the stuffed chair, but when she wants to get down, she looks to one of us for help. As I finish writing this, she is sleeping on her bed in my office. She often joins me when I write. She is a mama’s girl. And she is my Ziva Baby.