Naomi warned me this weekend: I knew immediately which one it was, the one with the dog’s body, broken and dragging itself home after it’s been shot.

Since then, I’ve been thinking about how to write about this story without reading it again.

And, so, I have started with the final sentence. If I can read the end, perhaps I’ll be able to work my way around the sadness.

Here is how it finishes: “There in the golden-grey dogs with their black-tipped ears and tails, sleeping in the stables or in the lees of woodpiles or under porches or curled beside the houses which face toward the sea.”

This story as a whole recalls a line from Island’s opening story, “The Boat”, in which the narrator explains: “I say this now as if I knew it all then.”

Here, in the ending of “Winter Dog”, our narrator examines the ‘now’, which contains all of ‘then’, but ‘then’ it was not fully understood. In this now, these golden-grey dogs contain the dogs of the past.

The penultimate sentence: “He is there in this winter storm.” It is relatable, the way that a sight before us, in the present moment, pulls us into memory. That dog, recalled in this tempest. Which recalls that earlier storm, in which the narrator nearly died. Were it not for that dog, the one that exists only in memory, the narrator would not have become a storyteller.

Back one more: “He persists in my memory and in my life and he persists physically as well.” This question of what persists recalls the end of “The Boat” as well. MacLeod’s stories revolve around this snarl: what endures and what erodes.

Finally, I reach the beginning of the last paragraph: “He was with us only for a while and brought his own changes, and yet he still persists.”

As a figment—in memory, in story—that’s how that dog persists. It shouldn’t be so affective. So many years later. This story persists.

This story is structured as though a batter studded with freshly trimmed strawberries, folded in delicately, to reduce their bleed in the raw dough.

The dog’s body reappears at regular intervals, his own body as it lived in the past and the memory of his body which persists in the presence of some other, unknown dog in the present-day.

His body is everywhere. My efforts to reread selectively, flipping from page to page, selecting single sentences to read, are thwarted quickly. And when I remember the hinge upon which the story turns, I simply turn to the beginning and read through as fast as I can. I don’t stop, it’s like drinking a tonic stewed from bitter herbs. My only note from this story is the final paragraph.

The dog’s body appears in relationship to another central theme in the story: home—how we lose it and how we find it—and how we define ourselves in relationship to it. That dog in the past, he was the reason that our narrator was able to return home safely, one stormy night. The dog in the present is alive, whereas the dog that saved our narrator’s life is not.

He would not have survived so long in any case, but that’s not important. What’s important is that the boy’s pride dictated that he kept that dog’s heroism a secret. Without explaining that the dog saved his life, without describing the series of decisions that the boy and the dog made, which resulted in the boy’s safe transport home during a storm, the story remained incomplete.

It was this untold story that resulted in the dog’s death. Because in the absence of that information, the facts which dictated the dog’s fate, were his size and strength, as well as his tendency to behave aggressively towards animals and people outside the family.

All these factors were responsible for the dog’s having successfully rescued the boy in that storm two years prior. But, without that knowledge, without either gratitude or appreciation, the boy’s father saw only fear and concern. There were two neighbourhood children who had been bitten. Nothing compared to having a son alive that would have perished without the dog’s intervention, but his father did not know this.

And, so, arrangements were made so that the dog would be shot, far from home. But the shooting did not go as planned and, so, once more, the dog struggles to return home. He is dying and, in this instance, the boy is safely home already.

The boy is home because the dog belonged there but although the dog saved the boy, the boy does not save the dog. This is another part of the story which resides firmly in the past but simultaneously in the present, where our narrator considers how we love and how we lose.

In the end, I had to read the secret, now that the narrator has found the courage to tell it. He needed to be braver then but, since then, he has learned something about bravery. And, so, it also feels like a story about forgiveness and about what we fear—or suspect, or know—to be unforgiveable. Which is why the story ends with a fragment.

For the better part of two years, I am rereading Alistair MacLeod’s short stories, from start to stop, just as I’ve done with Alice Munro’s and Mavis Gallant’s short stories previously. If you love short stories or if you would like to be a short-story lover, several of these authors’ stories are among my favourites, and would make an excellent introduction to the finest of the form. If you have other favourite story writers, please feel free to contribute those to the conversation too.

NOTE: The featured image of a handwritten MS is a still image captured from MacLeod’s No Great Mischief, as featured in the film Reading Alistair MacLeod by William D. MacGillivray, produced by National Film Board and Picture Plant in 2005. The filmmaker’s page is here, watch it, if you can.