I lost Stella to the earth and cosmos three months ago today. The first month or so of wind-knocked-out-of-you, suddenly-sobbing, suddenly-wailing sorrow has given over to a softer sort of still-gutting grief. Fast tears most days even yet. Ahh, my puppy.

I know these are the cycles and they’re not new to me, but still. Can you measure a person’s life in dog years? I mean this: the sixteen years we tracked tightly together were closer to one-third than one-quarter of my life. Stella was there in the easy Before Times of my late 30s, and she was there for all the good and much horribleness that started to follow soon after. She was my closest friend, for years the sole creature I came happily home to day after day, night after night, for more than a decade. All the solace and joy she gave me I cannot calculate. A thousand walks we went on. Three, maybe four times that more. These were the nearest thing to a sacred ritual I’ve ever had—so intimate a relationship really, the two of us alone in some corner of nature each day, tied by an invisible thread that she’d never let get broken, would never allow go slack, however wide her roaming got. It was thanks to Stella I started to pay particular attention to things again, seeing and sensing them as in childhood; that I saw countless skies, moons, changing sun-bright meadows. Still nights, softly rustling nights, the gelid stars in February darkness like sharp glass set drifting in a depthless black ink sea. There were road trips and camping, long lake days and their unending returns to the water, cuddles inside of sleeping bags to keep warm, family holidays away. Wild spring rivers bravely (and often hilariously) swum, three tennis balls collected effortlessly in her mouth like candies.

And she was simply fierce and fearless and funny. Fun. She ate raspberries right off the vine. She had a beautiful, jaw-dropping physicality and goofy grace in the early and middle years. She had an indefatigable will always. Was all life-force and unblinking courage even in those last many difficult months in a way you could only hope to approximate. A scenery-chewing enthusiasm for life right to the end, broken hips be damned. Nothing ever stopped Stella’s heart ever, except for me on that last day, which thoroughly breaks mine.

How do you get at the specificity of an animal? It’s hard. We get maudlin, we sound trite. I’ve never known a creature of any sort quite like her, just that. She was my constant, my through-line. My muse. She was my shadow and she was my scout. And my North Star, too, when I most needed it. She was light and spirit in her own radiant way, and we were each other’s, that’s all.

Stelle Belle, for as long as I’m here I’ll be walking with you along the paths of our tangled little woods, under the moon and stars, trying to find the words. I love you, Stella. I love you so much, little girl. Thank you for everything. Thank you for being mine, and letting me be yours.