She was both my right arm and my left arm. She was the first beat of my heart, and always the last. Peach was, first and always, a happy dog. Anyone who spent even a few minutes with her would say the same thing: she was always smiling. It wasn't a trick of the light or a corgi's naturally amused expression — it was simply who she was. She moved through the world with an easy, open contentment that had nothing to do with circumstance and everything to do with character. She was not an especially affectionate dog. She would tolerate about five minutes of cuddling — precisely long enough to be polite about it — and then she was done. But she was never far. Wherever I was, wherever I moved through the house or the day, Peach was rarely more than eight feet away. She would get up, follow, and lie back down again, eyes on me, keeping her own quiet watch. It wasn't neediness. It was devotion on her own terms — steady, watchful, and entirely hers. For years she went to the office with me every single day, until about six months ago, when the walk simply became too far for her. At the office, she was, by my own admission, the better therapist. She had a gift for breaking tension that no amount of clinical training could teach. She would rest her nose against a bar of her crate until her lips pulled up into something between a smile and a snarl, looking exactly like a vampire — and more than one client broke out laughing right in the middle of a session. One day a client sat down, looked at me, and asked if Peach could come out for a little while. She walked over and sat in front of him, and he told me I could go wait in the lobby — the two of them would be just fine. With adolescent clients especially, I would sometimes say she needed a walk. It is remarkable how much a teenager will open up over the course of an hour spent walking a dog around the block. Peach was, above all, always with me. She was a character, loved by everyone who met her, and she was rarely left behind: six trips to Mexico, four to Pittsburgh, three to San Francisco, two to Denver. On one trip to Mexico, while a friend and I were down at the beach, I got a text from the property manager — a photo of Peach standing on top of a four-by-four brick pillar, thirty feet high, striking a pose right out of The Lion King. She had climbed to the highest place she could find, just to see where I was. She gave everyone quite a scare, but she carried herself the whole time like she knew exactly what she was doing. A year and a half ago, Peach was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer. It was frightening news, but she responded well to treatment and remained stable on her medication for a long time afterward — stable enough that this past February she made her sixth trip to Mexico, a full month away, happy and healthy enough that I had begun to imagine she might move there with me one day. It was, in the end, her age that caught up with her rather than the cancer. Over the last three months, she began having accidents in the house, which never once bothered me — there was nothing I wouldn't do for her, not after everything she had given me. This past month, she began sleeping most of the day, and her mobility kept slipping. Then this last Friday, she stopped eating, her urination increased, and she could only manage a short walk down the sidewalk and back. She was never, at any point, in pain. But the smile that had always been there — the one everyone who knew her would mention first — was harder to find that weekend, and harder still each day after. For a little while, hand-fed treats could still coax her to eat. By Sunday, even that had stopped. An ultrasound at the vet's office found a mass in her stomach, and it became clear that nothing was going to get better. The hardest part was that she never stopped being herself. Even at the very end, she was still responsive, still wanting to be wherever I was — following me around the apartment until she simply collapsed, unwilling to rest anywhere but near me. The doctors who had cared for her and loved her for years assured me I was making the right decision. It did not make the decision feel any less devastating, or the emptiness that followed any less real. This morning, July 27, I had Peach euthanized. A veterinarian and a vet tech sat on the floor with Peach and me; another veterinarian called in just to be present; other staff members quietly came in, one at a time, to sit for a few moments before stepping back out. It was, in its way, exactly the kind of goodbye a dog like Peach deserved — surrounded by people who had come to know her, in a room that held space for how much she mattered. Peach had the best life. In thirteen years, she was almost never away from me — only a couple of overnight hospital stays in all that time, and even then, the staff always let me stay with her in her kennel. She was fearless, a little bit reckless, endlessly loved, and entirely devoted, always keeping watch for the person she loved. There are a thousand more stories to tell about her. For now, the pictures will have to do. She was both my right arm and my left arm. She was the first beat of my heart, and she will always be the last.