When I went to my first acting class, I was assigned a monologue to work on. I picked The Love Story of Alfred J. Pruflock, a famous poem by T.S. Eliot that I had read as a child when I stayed up later than permitted and read with a flashlight under the sheets. I can’t imagine telling my child he or she could not stay up late reading T.S. Eliot, but times were different then, things like bedtimes were fixed and non-negotiable borders.

I tried reading the monologue – to the class, and to my readers on the blog, to my friends, even to the Mansion residents and staff. The residents were the kindest of all, they were rooting for me, but the messages from everyone else were pretty consistent, with a very few exceptions.

I wasn’t great, I wasn’t effective, I was stiff and uncomfortable and flat. And oh, yes, I smacked my lips as well.

I asked for this advice and welcomed it, and it was good advice. Sitting in class, getting up again to read this stiff Edwardian poem, I knew I didn’t want to. Red was sitting at my feet – he came to class with me, everyone loved having him there – and I just suddenly knew what I wanted to do.

I put the poem in my camera bag, said goodbye to T.S. Eliot,  and asked Christine Decker, the well-known actor and our teacher (we were at the Oldcastle Theatre in Bennington, Vt., where our class was held) and asked if I could switch monologues. Sure, she said.

I said I wanted to tell the Story of Red. That’s my monologue. That’s what I’m working on tonight.

Red, as you know is failing, he is almost blind now, was paralyzed twice in recent months, and spends as much time as he can with me. He is always with me, or near me. Ten times a day, I look around and ask “where’s Red,” and the answer from Maria is always the same. “He’s right behind you.” And there is where he always wants to be, and that is where he always is.

About seven or eight years ago, a very special and  loving woman, a border collie breeder and a minister named Karen Thompson, e-mailed me. She had read one of my books, Izzy & Lenore, about my first work hospice work with dogs, and she said God had told her he wanted me to have Red.  This unnerved me, I avoided her. God had never been directly involved in my dog decisions, what if it didn’t work out?

I was in a bad way at the time, my publishing life had gone to pieces after the recession, and so had my marriage and my life. I was trying to put it back together.

Standing in front of the acting class, I realized that the Story Of Red was one of those remarkable dog stories Red’s story has everything a Hollywood screen writer could think to put in there – God, death, rebirth, salvation, generosity, rescue and salvation, love and connection.

It is the story of everything  a dog can mean to a human being. Red was a cross between Buck in A Call Of The Wild and Lassie.

Red was born in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, ravaged for decades by the Troubles. He was raised by one of those Irish farmers who didn’t see border collies as pets but as tools critical to the farm. The border collie was first bred around 1903, farmers wanted a dog that combined intelligence and obedience.

Karen won’t tell me what she saw in Ireland, but she didn’t like what she saw and she bought Red and  brought him to Virginia, where she bred him and trained him and rehabilitated him.

I loved border collies, when Karen e-mailed me I had just lose Rose, the dog who helped me survive on my new farm.

The first border collie was named Old Hemp and all other border collies carry some of his blood. Karen Thompson send me videos of Red almost every day, I could see he was an outstanding herding dog, and I had some sheep on my farm. Karen wanted Red to have a richer life than she could offer, she hoped he might become a therapy dog like the ones she had read about in my book.

Six months later, a friend drove Red up from Virginia, and the moment he stepped out of her car, he was my dog. It was as if he had been with me his whole life, as if we had been waiting for one another, and in a sense we had.

Red went everywhere with me, including my hospice runs up in the Adirondacks and around Washington County, N.Y. We began working with dementia patients in elder care. We began working with Medicaid patients in assisted living. We sat alone with people in dark cabins while they died, went to a score of funerals, comforted families. Red can spot a needy person a mile away, if you cry anywhere near him he will find you.

Red had from the first an almost supernatural gift for soothing the anxious, the lonely and the needy. He helped so many people navigate their fear and loneliness, he helped so many people to leave the world in some peace and dignity.

We had so many powerful moments together, so many people felt such joy at seeing him, even as they tottered on the edge of life. He did a lot of good.

He helped me to understand my own mortality, he helped me to find a community, he led me into the world of the weavers, the people the New York Times calls weavers and says practice “radical mutuality.”

I’m working on my new monologue – Red and I go on stage Friday. I mean for the monologue to honor him and his life, I know he is beginning to die, I can feel it and see it. The vet says it might be any day, or it might be months and months, you never really know.

Red and I fused some years ago, there is really no telling where one of us end and the other begins.

I don’t want to tell the whole story of Red here, I want it to be fresh and spontaneous on stage, I don’t want it to be or feel rehearsed. Even though I know he is dying, I don’t see it as a sad story, a lament of grief and loss. Red’s story is a very happy story, for me, for him, and for the very many people he has soothed and comforted and helped.

As I write this I’m taking notes for my monologue, writing own things I hope I don’t forget. And of course I needed to write about it on the blog, it is very much on my mind, tonight and this week.

I want the story to be spontaneous but I also want to honor this extraordinary creature, and do justice to his story, so I veer back and forth between just waiting to tell the story as it happened and doing some preparation. I think I’ll just let it tell itself. You can kill a story like that by rehearsing it and overthinking.

A dog like Red, a Spirit Dog, is a gift from the angels, I did nothing to deserve him, and am nothing but grateful for  him. The least I can do is celebrate his life rather than mourn his loss.