Even before I installed myself in this house—which we’ll very soon be leaving—I was worried about the dark, restricted life the poor animal led. The first thing I did on moving in was restrict it even further, since the barking under the bedroom window at night, combined with the ghostly rattling of the chain and the overturned water bucket, was disturbing my sleep. We agreed to move the kennel to the outdoor courtyard at the center of the house, thus separating the dog from the goings-on in the street and the empty lot, and these days we put him there every night before bed. This has worked well. The dog now sleeps peacefully, except sometimes when there’s a full moon and choruses of dogs strike up in the small hours for mysterious reasons I wish I understood, and our dog joins in with his distinctive, familiar voice. But most of the time he sleeps peacefully at night, and so do I.

The next step was to take charge of his food. He used to be fed just once a day, which meant he was putting on a lot of weight. I started splitting his meals into smaller portions, which is proven to help with weight loss, and this forged a special bond between us: I became the person who feeds him, an extremely important role in the eyes of a dog, and worthy of the greatest respect and admiration—or at least, that’s what people say. I think it’s more that the dog sees me as one of his employees, and sometimes I even get the feeling he’s watching me closely and weighing how useful I really am.