We Little Bloggers are thrilled to welcome Julia Spencer-Fleming as a guest blogger today. Julia is a great friend to new and veteran authors, and we’re pleased to let you know that her new book, All Mortal Flesh, comes out next month.

I have an old dog.

We adopted Jake from a shelter in ’96, when he was a high-energy one-year-old who had been left by his first owners for his penchant to bolt away from home and vanish for hours at a time. He’s a big dog, a Newfie-spaniel-aussie sheepdog mix (as determined by his looks and temperament), and at 11, he’s old. Arthritis in his hips. Mysterious and dreadful flatulence. Daily medication. For all that, his vet says, he’s in good shape. She scratches behind his ears. “You’re a good old fellow, aren’t you?”

Yes. Yes, he is.

When he was young, he had a roving soul. In the morning, we’d run three miles, looping around the river. In the evening, I’d walk him down the crabapple-sprung lane and circle our pond, my arm aching from holding him back on the leash. And even after that, he’d go to the door to be let out at ten or eleven or twelve and, too lazy to put on my shoes or too busy to slip on his leash, I’d swing open the door and that would be that. I’d find him asleep on the porch the next morning, ready to spring up and attack the new day.

Unless there was a full moon. On moon-heavy nights, I’d hear him at three a.m., shaking the neighborhood with his booming bark. We live in the Maine countryside, where there’s a lot to interest a lunatic dog. A corral of horses down the road. Cats, both tame and feral. Woods filled with deer and fox and fishers. I would waken to his bell in the wee hours and cursing, stumble into my wellingtons. Throw a parka over my pajamas and stagger out into the moonlight to find him barking up at a critter in a tree. Or worse, to see his white flashings disappearing into the woods, fruitlessly, joyfully chasing after something.

The only animal he ever caught was a horse, and the experience left him with a broken tail and a great deal more respect for equines.

Sometimes he’d show up on the porch dripping wet or stinking to high heavens, for all the world like a soldier back from a three-day pass. (Although a small operation in his youth insured we didn’t need to worry about him spending time with ladies of the night.)

Nowadays, Jake still noses the door to go out at the end of the evening. But he does his business and limps back up the stairs, to settle on the doggy sofa. Occasionally­–like many an older gentleman, his bladder isn’t all it used to be—he wakes me up at midnight. I let him out, go back to bed, and within a half hour or so I’ll hear a single, well-mannered bark asking to be let in to his comfortable couch.

One night recently, he snuffled at my bedside. I let him out, fell back into bed, and instantly went back to sleep. I awoke, startled, to see the clock glowing three a.m. He had been out for three hours. I threw off the covers and went downstairs, thinking, heart attack? Stroke?

Outside, the world was flooded with light from an early autumn moon hanging ripe and low on heaven’s branch. Worried as I was, I still lifted my face to it, and so was halfway down the porch steps when I noticed Jake stretched out on the drive. For a moment, I thought–­but then I saw his paws twitch and I knew he was asleep.

He doesn’t run through the woods or wake the neighbors with his wildness anymore. But even an old dog can have the soul of a rover, and rise up from his easy bed to lay down on packed dirt and gravel. I watched him for a long time as his paws twitched from some adventure playing out in his sleeping head. An old wanderer, drenched and dreaming in the moonlight.

I love you, old dog.