If you had told me a few years ago that I would fall hopelessly in love with a green-eyed, wet-nosed, sixty-five pound canine you’d have been met with raised eyebrows and a curious stare. I was firmly a cat person, and could see no reason or future desire to welcome into my life — or my miniscule studio apartment — a large, slobbering poop machine.

Things change, I guess. I’m living in rural Massachusetts in a house with a dining room bigger than the entirety of my Manhattan apartment, and I’m absolutely smitten with a one-and-a-half-year-old yellow Labrador retriever I named Bix.

I found Bix on Petfinder at a shelter in Phoenix, Arizona just a month after we moved to the southwest in the summer of 2006. My cat, Simon, had died a few weeks earlier, and I felt like the best way to work through the grief I felt about losing that lovable, fat-bellied cat would be to immerse myself in the hard work of raising a puppy. My in-laws in Arizona had two lovable Goldens; my sister-in-law had a faithful Heeler-mix called Scout. I was surrounded by dogs — it was inevitable. As we drove home from the shelter that hot August day, I watched Bix sleep in the backseat of the Volvo. I wasn’t sure whether to let him ride home on my lap — would he be sick on me, or pee? — or in the crate, but eventually chose the crate. His tiny pink tongue had slipped out of his mouth and his soft, furry chest rose and fell with each breath. I still wish I’d chosen to hold him for the two-hour ride home. He fit on my lap for only a few short weeks.

I knew it was love the first time he got sick, just a few days after we brought him home. Late one night, as we debated whether to drive him to the emergency animal hospital, I threw up my hands in frightened exasperation and went into the bedroom to weep for a few minutes at the edge of my bed. It was so soon after Simon, and I already loved the little guy so much; I wasn’t sure I could handle what might come next.

Eventually, after an IV and a few rounds of antibiotics, Bix recovered. He grew from a gangly puppy to a loping adolescent. He tentatively explored rivers and creeks, then swam with great canine joy, those fat paws of his paddling through the water. He came when called, sat when asked, and rang a a bell at the back door with his nose when he wanted to go out.

This week, Bix has been sick. He’s been unable to keep any food in his stomach, and wanders through the house wavering slightly from the mild anti-nausea and sedative medication that the vet gave him this afternoon. He hasn’t eaten since breakfast, and won’t be able to eat until tomorrow, when I can feed him a little bit of cooked chicken and white rice. All this time he’s been whining, a constant, high-pitched whistle. Every once in a while he lets out a low-pitched groan, the kind I usually laugh at when he’s stretching out in the evening, or resting his heavy head on my lap while I’m reading. I can’t begin to imagine what the whine means, now, exactly, but it’s his only way of communicating and it totally breaks my heart.

Lots of “ifs” rest on tomorrow: if he eats, if he keeps his food down, if they do a Barium trace, if they find something they didn’t see in the X-ray.

Tonight all three of us will curl up together in the little double bed: me, Dan, and Bix in the middle. We’ll make a little extra room for him at the foot of the bed, maybe even fluff up our pillows so he can lay his soft muzzle down and snore in our ears. And maybe tomorrow he’ll be better.