He charged again. The third stream splashed his eyes, and once more he arced away from us.

Eerily silent through all this, the shepherd launched a fourth charge, this time straight at me because I had been such a bastard to him.

There were supposed to be five squirts in this canister. The shepherd retreated after taking the fourth stream in the face, and I wondered what I would do if he had not one but two more charges in him.

It might be cool to have the nickname Pegleg, and without a nose, I might have fewer sinus problems, but I really hoped not to end up with a high-pitched Mickey Mouse voice.

The shepherd had enough. He returned to the lawn where he was sitting before Hermann Goring IV sicced him on us, and he rubbed his face in the grass, trying to wipe off the noxious spray.

The kid was wide-eyed and speechless, and I had one more squirt in the can, but I decided to save it for the shepherd in case he got his second wind.

Trixie smiled at me and wagged her tail, and I felt like her knight in shining armor as I hurried her away from Dogzilla. We turned right at the corner and went four blocks on the next street before I stopped to examine her side where I thought the shepherd had bitten her. I couldn’t find any blood, and I didn’t want to linger. As we walked home, I glanced over my shoulder all the way.

I told Gerda about the encounter and showed her where the shepherd had seemed to nip Trixie. This time, when Gerda pulled back the thick fur, we saw the bite. The wound was barely bleeding because he had ripped off a patch of her skin the size of a silver dollar without getting his teeth into the meat of her.

This can’t have felt like any kind of kiss. Yet Trixie never yelped or whimpered.

On Sunday, our vet’s offices were closed. We rushed Trix to the emergency clinic near the airport. After the vet on duty sewed up the wound and gave us medication instructions, she said, “She’s a very stoic little dog.”

Short Stuff weighed over sixty pounds, but she was thoroughly feminine and appeared smaller than she was. She seemed particularly fragile to me as I lifted her into the back of our Explorer for the trip home from the clinic, because I couldn’t stop thinking that the attacking shepherd might have gotten his teeth in her throat if the first blast of pepper spray had missed his muzzle.

I had no animosity toward the shepherd. I felt sorry for him, though I knew the spray caused only temporary misery. The dog had done what the boy had told him to do and what the boy’s parents had evidently trained him to do. The people were the villains here, and the shepherd could, in a sense, be seen as a victim of theirs.

I reported the bite to animal control. The officer on the phone asked for the address. I told him the street name but did not know the house number. He did know the number, however, and knew the breed of the dog before I told him. Our attacker had a history.

Because I believe policemen and animal-control officers usually do a commendable and thankless job, I’m sorry to say the owners of this animal weren’t fined and weren’t issued even a warning citation, as far as I know. After weeks of “investigation,” an officer gave me an incoherent explanation of why the case would be closed without action.

Another officer, dismayed by the department’s failure to act, told me that the owner of the shepherd had tight ties to the city government and was destined to skate until the dog one day drew blood from a person instead of from another dog. I thanked him for his off-the-record frankness, but I told him that my Trixie was a person. Being a dog lover himself, he understood what I meant.

“A VERY STOIC little dog,” the joint surgeon said again.

Having been unable to get a whimper from Trixie when he flexed and stretched her elbow, he X-rayed it from different angles and was able to show Gerda and me the problem. Trix needed the same surgery on her left elbow as she had undergone on her right.

A couple of days later, we returned with her to the hospital. She would be staying overnight because surgery was at five o’clock in the morning. We took one of my dirty T-shirts to leave with her, so she’d have my familiar scent, and one of her favorite toys.

This was June 2000, after she had been living with us for a year and nine months. She had long ago ceased to be just a dog and became our daughter, too. Because she couldn’t understand that hospitalization was for the best, leaving Trixie there felt like a betrayal. Gerda and I half wanted to go home and scourge each other with brambled branches as penance for not insisting on sleeping in the hospital-kennel cage with her.

At home, we split a bottle of wine with dinner, and I had an extra glass from a second bottle. My consumption was laughably low by the standards of Hemingway, but if Trixie had too many more health crises, I’d be pounding it down like Papa.

We were told that Trixie would have to stay at the hospital at least one night after the surgery, possibly as many as three. But the following day, the surgeon called twice, first to report that the operation had gone well, and later, at five o’clock, to tell us that we could bring her home.

“She’s the calmest dog I’ve ever seen,” he said. “She’s made no effort to worry the incision, she isn’t straining at her tether or barking, and yet she’s been on her feet and alert hours sooner than usual.”

When we arrived at the hospital to collect our girl, concerned parents crowded the waiting room. A few appeared haunted, and I knew that with their animals, they were facing worse problems than we were with Trixie. Gerda and I felt grateful, relieved, and happy that the Trickster was coming home.

Then a nurse brought her out to us, and poor Trix was in sorrier condition than we expected. Her left arm, shoulder, and part of her flank were shaved. She tottered shakily with the assistance of the nurse. At first her face remained hidden in the plastic Elizabethan collar-or cone-that prevented her from chewing at the incision. She surveyed the crowded room, searching for us, and when we bent toward her, she tilted her head back, revealing that her eyes were bloodshot and her facial fur matted with tears.

She grinned when she saw us, and we cried. We didn’t sob noisily like babies, didn’t blubber, but hot tears sprang forth as if our eyes were showerheads. The sobbing, the face-wrenching anguish, the bitter thickness in the throat that makes swallowing difficult, the heaviness in the chest that is the weight of what was lost: All of that would come in too few years. This was a small taste of that, not an inoculation to prepare us to better handle grief-nothing can immunize against grief-but a reminder to cherish what you love while you have it, so that when it passes, you will have memories of joy to sustain you.

Gerda took off Trixie’s cone and rode in the cargo space of the Explorer with her, holding her and reassuring her.

One of the greatest gifts we receive from dogs is the tenderness they evoke in us. The disappointments of life, the injustices, the battering events that are beyond our control, and the betrayals that we endure from those we befriended and loved can make us cynical and turn our hearts into flint on which only the matches of anger and bitterness can be struck into flame. Other companion animals can make us more human, but because of the unique nature of dogs-their clear delight in being with us, the rejoicing with which they greet us when we come home to them, the reliable sunniness of their disposition, the joy they bring to playtime, the curiosity and wonder with which they embrace each new experience-they can melt away cynicism and sweeten a bitter heart.

And there is the matter of their gratitude. When Trixie came to us, I expected her delight, her rejoicing, her sunniness, her joy and curiosity and wonder, but the remarkable and constant gratitude that dogs express for what we give them is arguably the most endearing thing about them. A bowl of kibble is a matter of routine, but a dog seems never to take it for granted. After food, after the gift of a new toy, after a play session or a swim, in the middle of a cuddle that gives dogs such bliss, Trixie turned those soulful eyes on you and all but spoke with them, or gave your hand a thank-you lick, or nuzzled her cold nose into the palm of your hand. As surely as dogs read us and, by countless telltales, know our moods and feelings, so we can read their telltales if we put our minds to it, and perhaps gratitude is the thing we see most often.