We have seen dogs slinking under a weight of guilt after they have turned the daily newspaper into confetti or chewed a slipper from which they were previously warned away. We have seen dogs in a state of shame, as Trixie was when she crawled on her belly and pressed her face into a corner after peeing on the carpet-even though the fault lay with me. We have seen dogs grin and prance with pride after performing a task as they were trained to do, which is a proper pride in the virtue of cooperation. When dogs risk their own lives to save one of us, they reveal their native knowledge expressed by Saint John in these words: “Greater love hath no man than this: that he lay down his life for his friends.”

If we have been reasoned out of a belief in our intuition and therefore in our mind’s native knowledge of wrong and right, we might wake from our trance of nihilism and discover that, after all, life does have meaning. If our dogs have a tao, we must have one, too, because dogs would not love us so much if we were nothing but meat machines without principles or purpose. Like human beings, dogs can be imperfect judges of characters, but they can’t be wrong about all of us.

Most of us will never be able to live with as much joy as a dog brings to every moment of his day. But if we recognize that we share a tao, we then see that the dog lives closer to that code than we do, and the way to achieving greater joy becomes clear. Loyalty, unfailing love, instant forgiveness, a humble sense of his place in the scheme of things, a sense of wonder-these and other virtues of a dog arise from his innocence. The first step toward greater joy is to stop fleeing from innocence, begin retreating from cynicism and nihilism, and embrace once more the truth that life is mysterious and that it daily offers meaningful wonders for our consideration.

Dogs know.

XVIII elbow surgery and meatballs

TRIXIE BEGAN SECRETLY limping. I stepped out of a room and caught her hitching along the hallway as if she were auditioning for an all-canine version of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. Crossing the bedroom, Gerda happened to glance back at Trix and saw that she was favoring her left forelimb. When she knew you had stopped to watch her, she made the effort to walk normally.

We checked her paw first, searching for a wound or an embedded splinter, but found nothing. After that examination, she made a heroic effort to avoid being caught in a limp, walking without hitch or hobble for the rest of the day.

Soon, however, she couldn’t conceal that her left leg troubled her. Bruce Whitaker X-rayed her and suggested she might have the same congenital problem in her left elbow that, in her right elbow, forced her into early retirement from her assistance-dog duties.

A surgeon was recommended. On our first visit to him, he led us out to a service alley and asked me to walk Trixie thirty feet away and then back toward him while he watched how she moved. “Elbow,” he declared.

He reached between her hind legs, feeling her pelvic bones. Then he suggested that I feel there as well and tell him what I found. Not having attended veterinary school, I considered myself inadequately educated to offer a second opinion or even a first. And I began to wonder about the surgeon’s credentials, too, because he had said the problem was the elbow, which was at the other end of the dog from the pelvis.

Because he was wearing a white lab coat, possessed an air of authority, and resembled Ernest Hemingway, I did as he instructed. Hemingway drank the equivalent of a fifth and a half of booze every day, frequently went through six bottles of wine with dinner, was a notorious and perhaps pathological liar, and behaved monstrously to nearly everyone who befriended him, so I’m not sure why a resemblance in this case impressed me. Yes, at his best, Hemingway could write like a wizard, but so can David Mamet, whom I would nevertheless forbid to operate on my dog.

I felt at once that the left pelvic bone was thicker than the right. Trixie had been compensating for elbow pain for a long time, continuously shifting her weight backward, stressing the pelvis on that side until it thickened. Yet she had only begun to limp a few days ago.

In the examination room, the surgeon manipulated the elbow joint, trying to make Trixie whimper. When he told me what he was doing, I wanted to pick up a surgical clamp and work on his nose until he whimpered, but I restrained myself. He needed her response to confirm his diagnosis, because this kind of congenital disorder didn’t always show up clearly on an X-ray.

Trixie refused to whimper. She didn’t wince or start anxiety panting. She just smiled at me while the doctor forced her elbow into uncommon positions.

“She’s a very stoic little dog,” he said.

I had heard that comment before.

IN FEBRUARY OF that year, Trixie had been bitten by a German shepherd that I am convinced was a trained attack dog. She reacted to the bite as if it had been no more than a kiss.

On a Sunday afternoon, we were out for a walk. As always I had a little canister of pepper spray. I carried it in my right hand.

We turned a corner and started up a sloped street we had often walked before. A boy of about nine hung by his arms from a tree limb in a front yard to our right. He looked as innocent as a choirboy, but as we drew closer, something about his attitude suggested there would be black candles on any altar where he served.

Two steps farther, I saw what the property wall at the adjacent house had concealed during our approach: a huge German shepherd lying in the yard, back from the tree in which the boy did his monkey act. It was not on a leash or restrained by anything.

German shepherds are beautiful, affectionate, and intelligent. Regardless of the breed, however, when you see a loose dog large enough to pull a Honda, caution is wise.

The shepherd glanced at us, seemed disinterested. Nevertheless, I turned Trixie around and walked away, telling myself discretion was the better part of valor, though wondering what might be the better part of cowardice.

I had gone maybe eight steps when the boy called out, “Yeah, you better run.”

We were walking, not running, but I wasn’t going to get into an insult contest with a nine-year-old, especially not with a nine-year-old backed up by a 150-pound saber-tooth dog. I could always have my revenge when it suited me, lie in wait for him some morning on the route he took to school, beat him up, and take his lunch money.

The kid’s behavior so appalled me, however, that I stopped, gave him my best look of disapproval, and asked, “What did you say?”

He had said it once. He wasn’t in a mood to repeat himself. He spoke instead to the German shepherd, something like, “Get ’em!”

The shepherd charged.

The day was warm for February, the trees swayed hypnotically in a mild breeze, and until this point in the walk, I felt a bit drowsy. Nothing brings you as fully awake as quickly as a giant dog that seems intent on getting a bite of your testicles.

As I aimed the pepper spray, I shouted, “Back!” and “Stop!” The shepherd heeded neither command, and I saw that he was charging not me but Trix, and that his trajectory would take him to her throat. So I squirted him.

The stream splashed into his nose and spattered across his face. He changed course but didn’t turn entirely away. He seemed to bite Trixie on the left flank, just forward of the hip, and then he turned away and raced back toward the boy, sneezing.

Fortunately, I didn’t assume the dog had been dissuaded, because sure enough he looped around and charged again. This time, the stream caught him in the eyes, which according to the instructions that came with the canister was the ideal hit. He turned away when he was six or eight feet from us.