The first time I ever met a blind dog was in Mobile. The dog’s name was Oscar. He sort of changed my life.

His eyes were sewn shut. I remember most of all the way he walked. His steps were cautious and careful. Unlike any dog I had ever seen before.

I cried when I saw him. I don’t know why. I cried when Oscar used his nose to trace the contours of my face.

“What’s he doing?” I asked his owner.

“Ssshhh,” his owner replied. “He’s seeing you with his nose.”

Not long thereafter, I learned about another dog who had been abandoned. A puppy. She was blind. Her head had been crushed from blunt trauma.

She lost her vision. Someone found her tied behind a tire shop in the wilds of Mississippi.

My wife and I drove across the state to meet her. And we had one of those dog-owner-people conversations about dogs.

“We are NOT SERIOUSLY getting ANOTHER dog,” my wife kept saying as we drove onward.

“Absolutely not,” I replied. “We’re just meeting her.”

We already had two 90-pound dogs at home. Our annual dog food bill is six digits. The last thing we needed was another.

“We’re NOT taking her home,” said my wife.

I said nothing.

“Did you hear me?” she said. “This is crazy. We are not fostering her.”

I pleaded the Fifth.

Meantime, I had this deep emotional throbbing in my chest. I had never even met the dog, but I was feeling something. I cannot explain it. It was the same feeling you get in maternity wards.

We arrived in the parking lot of our meeting place. A car pulled beside us. The car door opened, and a black-and-tan dog wandered out. Her eye was sewn shut. Her skull was still healing.

Her name was Marigold. She was so little. You could count her ribs. There were scars on her face from past dogfights. She had this mannerism about her. Like she was stuck inside her own head, with nobody capable of breaking through the darkness to love her.

She moved with cautious steps toward me and my wife and somehow she found her way into our arms. Then, she began licking my face—the dog, that is. Not my wife. My wife does not lick my face anymore.

“We are NOT taking her home,” said my wife, laughing while receiving a facial bath.

“We’re just going to foster her,” I said.

“FOSTER HER? How long?”

“One week, max.”

“One week. You swear?”

“Two weeks, tops.”

“Two weeks, and then she HAS to go,” my wife said as the dog burrowed into her clothing.

That was a long time ago.

As I write this there is a tiny blind dog curled up against my wife, sleeping. This dog is my wife’s eternal shadow. In fact, I don’t even know if Marigold knows whether I exist anymore. All she does is follow my wife around the house like—well—a lost puppy.

I love to watch my wife and Marigold sit together. Sometimes, my wife will place her own nose against Marigold’s soft muzzle. Then, the two of them will move their noses around each other’s faces.

“What are you two doing?” I’ll ask.

“Ssshhhh,” my wife says. “We’re seeing each other.”