I think it is only in retrospect, only in looking back, that I have come to see clearly what it is that animals have done for me. When I was a small boy, I got up on a freezing cold morning and walked to school in the dark to be the first in line to get a free puppy.

I had to fight an older kid, who knocked me to the ground – my first fight, and only the janitor’s intervention saved me and got the puppy, who I named Lucky. I was a bedwetter and a frightened boy, especially lonely at night, and Lucky took up the task of so many dogs, keeping me company, loving me, comforting me.

Lucky was not lucky himself, he died of distemper a couple of months after I got him, my father took me out for ice cream and told me that Lucky was sick and was going to live on a farm in Massachusetts where sick dogs go to get better. I knew the minute he opened his mouth that Lucky was dead, and that was my first lesson in the folly of lying to children.

I also learned from Lucky that I could be loved, that the things I love could die and go away, and that I could find other things to love, especially dogs. Lucky taught me more than he could ever have imagined.

I got my Labs Julius and Stanley, on an impulse. I had just become a writer, my wife then bought a desk and put it in the bedroom and urged me to write my first book, which was a novel. Writing is a lonely life, a solitary life, especially at the beginning when it is mostly about longing and rejection..

Julius and Stanley defined the experience, they walked with me in the morning, when I needed to think, they lay by my feet when I wrote. They seemed to think it would all work out and I decided to believe them. They came with me on my year along in the country, a powerful harbinger of things to come. I think the year would have been unbearably lonely and strange without them. I don’t think I could have survived it by myself.

When I moved to the Bedlam Farm 1.0, Rose came with me, and Orson. Rose went to work up there, she helped me manage that beautiful place and gave me the courage to slug it out. She watched my back, saved my life, protected the farm. Orson came with me too, he taught me something else, that having a dog is an awful responsibility which sometimes asks us to truly decide what kind of people we are. When he bit and harmed three different people, including a child riding down the hill on a bike, I stopped spending money on behaviorists, trainers, holistic healers and shamans and put him down. The decision, which caused many people to despise me, was a good and important one.

It was the beginning of my search for an ethical life, for an understanding of what it means to do the right thing, even if it is unpopular. That is a huge gift to get from a dog. Because I loved Orson so much, killing him was the most important decision I ever made. Loving dogs, I saw, did not encompass the harming of human life, at least not for me.

Simon the donkey just opened me up like a can of beans, the process of healing him, earning his trust, loving him, transformed me, I took a giant step in love, I opened up to new experience. When Maria came with Frieda, this remarkable dog opened me up to love. Izzy became my first hospice dog, he helped me understand mortality and compassion.

Red arrived as my soulmate, he is simply my partner in new experience. And Fate has come, the Joy Dog, to remind me what it means to love life and live it.

The list is longer of course, Winston the Rooster, Mother the Barn Cat, Chloe the pony, the sheep, the barn cats. I remember when a dog trainer told me a few years ago that if I wanted to have great dogs, I had to be a better human. She was so right. Each animal I have lived with has enriched me, challenged me to be more open, more loving, to learn about myself, my frustration, my fear and anger.

Each animal has, in fact, made me better. I am grateful to Lucky, he lived a short while but did a great deal of good. An inspiration for me. When I look back on my life, I see animals marking my passage, challenging me to understand who I am and who I wish to be.