Part 2 We got Banjo in the summer of 2011, eight weeks old, from a family two towns over whose retriever had surprised them with a litter. Mark and I had been married three years. No kids yet. We brought home this ridiculous gold puppy with paws too big for him and named him Banjo…

Part 2 I should tell you about the saddlebag before I tell you what was in it. My name is Cole. I have lived in the same house outside Sturgis for twenty-six years. I was a welder until my shoulder gave out; now I do small engine repair out of the garage, enough to get…

Part 2 I should tell you about the curve, because the curve is half the story. The bottom of County Road 9 outside Marshall bends hard to the left, and on the outside of that bend the ground falls away into a strip of dense brush — sumac, blackberry cane, head-high scrub that has not…

Part 2 I should tell you about the tracks behind the elevators, because the place is half of why nobody understood. The Norfolk Southern line runs behind a row of dead grain elevators on the north edge of Lima, down in a cut, below street level, with steep gravel embankments on both sides. From the…

Part 2 I should tell you what I mean by a growl being perfect, because it is the whole hinge of this, and almost nobody but a handler would have caught it. There are two kinds of aggression in a dog, and they do not look the same once you have seen ten thousand hours…

Part 2 I should tell you about the leaning, because the leaning is the whole language of this, and you will need it later. A working German shepherd does not show affection the way a pet does. Diesel did not jump, did not paw, did not do the wiggling-whole-body thing. What Diesel did was lean.…

Part 2 I should tell you what Strength’s pull felt like, because the pull is the whole language between us, and you’ll need it later. A dog pulling a wheelchair is not a sled dog hauling for the joy of running. It is a partnership conducted entirely through a taut line. I could feel everything…

Part 2 I should tell you about Atlas’s alert, because the alert is the whole reason I did what I did, and a person who has never worked a dog will not understand why I broke protocol on the strength of a dog’s posture. A trained search dog tells you things with its body, and…

I’m going to tell this slow. The slow part is the whole story. I want to tell you about Wren. Wren Esperanza Castellanos-Whitcombe-Olufsen was born on June 14th, 2019, at Mission Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. She was 7 pounds 4 ounces. She was a healthy newborn. She nursed well. She gained weight on schedule.…

I named him Atlas on the drive home, because he looked like he’d been carrying something heavy for a long time. He rode in the passenger seat with his head down, watching my hand on the gearshift like it might disappear. Every time I shifted, he flinched. Every single time. My apartment was small —…