I hadn’t even wanted a dog.

Childhood allergies meant I’d never had one before, and I was perfectly contented with our two kitties, thanks. So when my husband came home all those years ago to tell me he’d found a puppy, and could we keep it, I was skeptical.

Of course, it wasn’t long before I saw how a 4-month-old puppy with huge brown eyes can change your life.
 
We suddenly had all sorts of new friends; C.B.’s sweet disposition helped us meet everyone in our growing neighborhood.

We took long walks every day, in all kinds of weather. I’ll never forget watching storms roll in over the Mississippi, comets in the winter sky and the pure joy of a puppy in a puddle, all because we were out walking with C.B.

And though I always thought this was a pet-lover’s fairy tale, raising a puppy really did prepare us for having a baby, if only because we knew our focus couldn’t always be on ourselves.

As I think about it now, all of C.B.’s bad habits were, in fact, our fault.

She would have been happy to sleep in her crate at night, as we’d taught her as a puppy, but we’d get lonely for her, so far away at the other end of the house, and eventually let her sleep in our bedroom.

It was me, actually, who taught her to jump on the bed, a trick I later regretted when I was hugely pregnant and she  and my husband and the cat took up all but a few inches of bed space.

And it was my husband, and, later, my son, who taught her that if you sit patiently as close to the table as you can get, eventually something good will come your way. She was a connoisseur of pizza crusts.
 
C.B. went to work with my husband as he began his new business; he cooked her special dog food when she kept getting sick on the regular kind. She was in the back seat next to Tomas on every first day of school and on as many of our vacations as we could manage.

Mostly we learned about unconditional love  —  hers for us, ours for her  —  and how a big, red dog can come to define the outlines of a family.

That’s why it was such a shock when she died last week at age 11. She hadn’t been sick or even out-of-sorts, but suddenly, she was dead on the living room rug.

I used to say that it was the luckiest day of C.B.’s life when my husband found her cowering under a bush at Charles Baker Airport in Millington and brought her home to live with us.

I know now that we were actually the lucky ones.

PS — It’s been more than a week now, and I miss C.B. almost more than when I wrote this column just after she died. My son, though, has been amazing, in the way that little kids always put things into perspective. To him, God decided it was time for C.B. to go to heaven, and that’s where she is, simple as that. Of course he’s sad, and misses her, but I think he’s the least torn up of all of us. We’ve also drawn great comfort from looking at our (many) pictures, and from the terrific book “Dog Heaven,” which makes me cry every time. (There’s also a Cynthia Rylant book about cats, which is equally wonderful.) Loving friends have sent both books, and they really have helped.

How have you coped with the loss of your special pet, and what we should know about how soon to think about getting another dog? Though of course there will never be another C.B.