This week was the anniversary of the day I said goodbye to the corgis.

I try not to dwell, embracing instead the “live in the moment” impact that dogs have on us. This year was no different, and I made the conscious effort the night before to tell myself I would not think about it.

Fast forward to that morning. My home outdoor cameras were going a little crazy a few minutes before my wake-up alarm was set to go off. Too early for the trash truck. Too early for animals to be very active.

The sky was already light—I have been appreciating the lighter evenings and lighter mornings as we start toward summer. That’s when I saw it—a flash of black going up and down my outdoor steps. Before I could figure that out, some of the other cameras alerted me to the presence of a human with a flashlight. My mind, half asleep, first jumped to home invader followed by the requisite brief panic, then when the movements of the man did not seem nefarious (and looked like the neighbor), wondered if someone lost a drone or a ball or some piece of siding had blown into our yard.

Calming, I re-watched the animal footage. Indeed, the footage showed a black dog with a leash still hanging off her collar. Then it all made sense. It was the neighbor’s dog, and the man was clearly trying to find her.

I hurried outside, quietly, to see if she was still around so I could help bring her home.

The day was quiet, the same quiet I used to enjoy when I would get up to walk the dogs. I have often told myself that I should get up and walk around the yard like I used to. With a toddler around and a busy schedule, it wouldn’t be fair to bring a dog into my life just now, but there’s something about going out alone, with no excuse to be outside, that seems weird. A person walking alone is suspicious. A person with a dog is doing something right. And dogs offer protection in the dark hours of morning, too, and their absence makes walking at night—even astrophotography—feel a bit vulnerable.

In any case, as I walked outside and noticed the early signs of spring, I remembered how it used to be every morning with the dogs, how I would greet little by little the changing of the seasons. The nuances between sunrises. The way the grass went from saturated green to lifeless tan, and back again.

After a time, one of the neighbors returned in her car—her husband had called, and the dog had come back to their door.

I went back inside to move on with my day, but the magic of the morning stuck with me.

That evening, while waiting for the kids to finish their martial arts class, I decided to walk to the grocery store. I normally drop off the kids, drive to the store, then drive back to the martial arts studio so I don’t have to carry the groceries. But with the memory of the morning’s walk, I decided to go by foot. It was warmer than it looked out, and I enjoyed the way the sun set behind the grocery store, the way the bright lights in the lot competed with the stars and planets in the sky.

In fact, the wind picked up in a way I remembered a year and a half ago, the evening before my daughter was born. It was a warm wind, a playful wind, and eighteen months ago, it made me think of my dogs, almost like they were giving me permission for something. A few hours later, I’d gone into labor.

That same breeze was playing with my hair as, walking back, my arms laden with grocery bags, I saw two spoons on the sidewalk. They were metal spoons, placed intentionally next to each other in the corner of the sidewalk. I wondered who placed them there and whether they had a purpose. Of course my mind shot back to spoonfuls of peanut butter or soup or (non-chocolate) ice cream or whatever dogsafe food I would eat and give to my two pups to sample.

I looked at those spoons and thought of the pups. I took a picture in my mind, but it wasn’t a sad picture. It was a wink from the universe. A little nudge. I looked up at the stars and smiled.

If you’ve been waiting for a new Corgi Capers book, I have two more written, the first in the editing stage, and I am working on illustrating all 5 of the books for a re-release. Coming soon!