After Lenore and Frieda died last winter, Maria and I agreed to get a dog. As many you know ad nauseum, I am not into prolonged grieving, I think dogs are all about joy and treasure for me, I never want to turn them into a misery. I hope to never mark the anniversaries of all of their deaths, I never have. Dogs are a gift to me, I am grateful for them every day. When one of my dog dies, I have a good cry and start looking. We all need to do it in our own way, but it is the most healing thing imaginable for me.

I have no reason to mourn a thing when I have dogs like Red and Fate. People ask me how Fate got her name, after the deaths of the other dogs, I eventually got around to e-mailing Dr. Karen Thompson, a saintly human and a genius of a dog breeder and told her we were looking for a dog.

I had been to shelters, trawled through rescue websites, called and visited breeders, we thought an English Golden Retriever, then another Lab, then a half dozen shelter dogs, all of whom fell through for one reason or another. When I e-mailed Karen, she e-mailed me right back in minutes.

“How do you feel about a puppy?,” she asked. “I have a puppy that has to be returned to me, the owner’s life just changed, she can’t have a dog right now.” She sent me a photo of Fate with her blue merle eye. A pirate dog, I whispered to Maria.  “I can keep her her for awhile until you get here,” she offered. I showed the photo to Maria.

She told me that Fate’s mother and father both came from Wales, strong herding lines. She was pretty lively, she said. That is the only understatement I have ever heard from Karen, Fate is a rocket-propelled missile, she leaps over chairs and sofas with a single bound. For her, exhaustion means lying down for two or three minutes.

Why do we love her so much? Because we are all crazy in just the same way, that that is the secret of celebrating a dog.

“How about next weekend?,” I asked.

Karen was startled, but she said sure.

What was the dog’s name?, I asked.

The next weekend, we went and got her. I didn’t want to live this creature lying around a day longer than necessary.

Karen mumbled something about fate, I thought she said the dog’s name was Fate. What she actually said was that it was fate that the dog became available minutes before I called. Karen is a famous and much respected breeder, her dogs do not sit around for long. If I’d called at any other time, I might have waited a long time.

So I told Maria her name was Fate, and it was, in fact, fated. A great name for her, and I didn’t even think of it. Karen is something of a mythical figure to me, she sees things most people do not see. Love pours out of every word and every e-mail. And every dog she breeds.