Dog walk

Pets are wonderful. At their best they lift your spirits with unconditional love. At their worst they remind you of the primitive, selfish parts of you that you, being human, struggle your entire life to conquer or at least suppress. (Or they're throwing up on the carpet. Never a hard surface that'd be easy to mop up. Always a rug or a carpet. Always.)
I had pets as a boy. Nothing exotic, the usual animals you'd find in a suburban house in the 1960s and 70s. Dogs, cats, gerbils, fish, turtles. As a teen, I wanted to be the cool guy with a boa constrictor, but when I found out you had to feed them live animals I demurred.
I never had a pet as an adult. 
Partly this is because I moved around more than most and, even when I was in one place for awhile, I was never sure where I'd be a few months from any given time. (I had hopes, dreams.) Partly it's because I lived in cities and I couldn't imagine having a dog or a cat that stayed in all day—or longer, for most cats—the small apartments I could afford to rent. When I was a kid you'd let your dog out in the morning and he'd (we always had males) run around all day, sometimes longer, if he smelled a female in heat. The dog would come back tired but happy at the end of his time in the wild. Everyone did that back then. Leashes were things you had to hunt for if you had to take your dog to a vet. (Sometimes quiet afternoons would be shattered by the awful sound of fur-covered bone getting slammed by the die-stamped steel of a car, followed by a shriek and a series of yelps that could have been anyone's dog; no one could tell because it was a sound they made only then. Sometimes it was your dog.)
Another reason I've had no pets since childhood is that my feelings for their suffering from ailments, injury, or age hurt me more deeply the older I became. The opposite should be true and maybe it is for people who form strong connections to their partners and children, but those are things I never did.
Two animals have died while I've cared for them and the grief I feel even decades later hurts more than anything else. The memory of deaths of people I've loved gives me a dull, empty ache. With animals, the memory induces a sharp pang that makes me draw a breath rapidly.

Me walking the dog.

Right now I'm taking care of a sister-in-law's Corgi and I'll be doing so for the next four days. I've done this several times before and the dog and I know each others' routines well. She hasn't been with me for over seven months because of the operations I've had that have failed to keep a terminal illness at bay, but she remembers all the little rules and customs I follow. She knows which door I'll use to exit the house, where I'll put her water and food, whether we're going to visit the back yard, walk around the neighborhood or, joy of joys, go for a car ride. When I get up from the desk or couch she knows whether I'm going into the kitchen to do something food related or to another room for another reason.
Animals aren't psychic, but they know things. Dogs' sense of smell is so beyond anything we can comprehend that it might as well be psychic. 
After a few drinks, I hold the dog close and say, "Do you know how sick I am? Do know when I'm going to die?"
She wriggles, says nothing.