Kirby was put to sleep three years ago, but it seems like yesterday. I am no great animal lover and Kirby wasn’t even my dog. It seems ridiculously maudlin to write the obituary of a pet that was not mine, but I have to recognise a void that is both real and significant.

Kirby belonged to my neighbor. Since we are friends, I would often have tea at her home, and the dog became familiar with me. Kirby was a fifty-pound brown-and-white Siberian husky, very fetching and surprisingly even-tempered even with a relative stranger like me. That tempted me to offer, on an occasion, to take Kirby out for a walk when my neighbor, because of an emergency, could not.

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I intended to take Kirby for a short walk, but she seemed to like it so much that we went around the entire lake near my home. She sniffed every bush on the way and anointed several trees. When the weather is congenial and a cooling breeze is there to help, I like to intersperse my walk with a jog.  This seemed to please Kirby all the more. She outran me easily and readily overlooked the distraction of the many squirrels that scurried temptingly near our trail.

Since I walked the trail regularly, I took Kirby along a number of times. Then, barely noticed by me, our morning excursions became routine. At the crack of dawn, I would take Kirby along a trail, often alongside the lake, and walk and run for a full hour before we returned for our respective breakfast. If I had an early morning meeting and could not go for a walk, I would see Kirby, as I passed, standing at my neighbor’s door and plaintively looking at me, realising that the quotidian stroll had been scuttled.

I soon started declining first-hour meetings with specious excuses. Since the neighbor had by now entrusted me with the combination to her home, in the rare instance I could not escape an early meeting, I would take out Kirby for a walk at an unearthly hour. Kirby would be often thirsty at the end of our run, and I got in the habit of pouring her some fresh water at the end of our tryst. Eventually I started supplementing the water with the dry-food breakfast she liked.

Soon we were walking in the evening as much as in the morning. The evening walk was less brisk and more leisurely, often interrupted by short conversations with friends and neighbors out for a constitutional. The amazing thing was that Kirby seemed to know the difference and never seemed to rush me or press me for a run. She was content to enjoy the roadside scents, the broken twigs, the fountain in the lake, the sunset from the Van Gogh bridge. Her placidity would be disturbed only on the rare occasion we sighted a fox in the bushes or a pair of deer in the woods.

It impressed me that Kirby seldom evinced discomfort in the presence of other dogs. Most dogs, even the disciplined ones, bark, sometimes uncontrollably, when other dogs appear on the scene. Kirby didn’t. It was notable because Kirby was a spirited creature. In her younger days, her owner told me, she would often run out, if the door was left open, and disappear for hours.

On one occasion, she had disappeared during her owner’s trip to another town and simply could not be found. Her mistress returned home, disconsolate, but Kirby turned up after six weeks: she had found her way, across more than a hundred miles, and reached home, hungry and filthy, but intact.

When it rained or snowed, I occasionally resented having to go out. But, once dressed and out of doors, I felt thankful for the freshness of the air and the ready zeal of my companion. Kirby, though getting on in years, was never morose, never dispirited, eager to explore the new day, the next bush, the unfolding drama of an unknown trail.

That is what I most remember of Kirby: the endless yearning for the world outside, the craving to explore the unseen and the unknown, the eagerness to explore even the familiar road to see what is new or changed. Even as she grew older, her vision blurred and her hearing faded, her yen to experience the universe continued and her taste for life stayed undiminished.

Age and infirmity eventually took their toll, and Kirby had to be put to sleep. I still walk around the lake but without a companion. I stand on the bridge as before and watch the sun rise, and ponder what remains to explore.

The writer is a Washington-based international development advisor and had worked with the World Bank. He can be reached at mnandy@gmail.com