August 1,2008 – Hot, sticky. Marion and Izzy have a routine now. We go into her room, and Izzy lies on the bed, and Marion strokes his paws and talks to him. The bond between them is palpable, the strongest yet I have seen between Izzy and a human. He seems rapt about her stories, and listens to them for a long time.
  “Izzy, I had a rough day,” she told, relating a day of headaches, discomfort and restlessness. “Izzy, I got in Dutch,” she said. What happened, I asked, getting close – she has trouble hearing. “Well, I was having breakfast and there was an accident, and some of my pudding landing on the nasty man who sits in the corner, and is mean to everyone.”
  Was it an accident, I asked? Well, yes, she said, of course, but some people thought it wasn’t, although the man had been yelling at her friends. And to tell the truth, it had happened once before. “Izzy, I wouldn’t spill pudding on you, not ever. You are a wonderful dog.”
  Izzy, she added, did I tell you that my husband’s name was Horace, but he was much better than the name? And I loved him and miss him very much, and he was a very good man.
   And his father was named Roscoe, poor man, and he was a Roscoe. And then she told Izzy how you train calves to take milk, slowly and laboriously and patiently, and it was so complex, raising these baby cows, that I couldn’t keep track of it, but Marion had not forgotten any part of the process.
  Don’t go tossing any pudding around,  Marion, I said when I left. You’ll get in “Dutch.” and she smiled a mischievous smile at me. “I wouldn’t ever,” she said.

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 We crossed the hall to see Edith, but she had a bad headache and waved Izzy away. We saw our girlfriend Jo, with whom we danced the other night, and she lit up when she saw me. “Hey, cutie,” she said, “you wanna get married?”
  I don’t know, I said. I am married. “I don’t care,” she said. “We can go dancing, every Friday and Saturday night, just like I used to. You wouldn’t believe it, but I used to go square dancing in Shushan every single Friday and Saturday night.
  I believe it, I said. You’re pretty cute yourself. And cheeky. Usually they fuss over the dog.