my dog Molly, who died last week. As long as I'm writing about her I can pretend she isn't completely gone. Though she is . . . she is gone forever, and I have to rearrange my life without its warm centre, where she was my loved and loving companion, my friend of 11 years, the only being who ever needed food and water and shelter from me, which it was the deepest pleasure to give.

I was looking forward to her becoming old and needing me more and beginning to come inside from the lane where she used to lie in wait for tractors and bound up to bark at distant dogs. Her muzzle was silvery already, but I had a clear picture of her in my mind when she would be really old, her coat mottled with grey, curled on a mat beside the fire.

I thought there'd be years more of our sharing our nights. When we lived together, bedtime was always early. I'd hear her flop onto the floor and sigh heavily and swallow a few times, then slip into sleep. I'd hear her soft yapping when she dreamed in the night. Then sometimes, in the morning, she'd jump up on the bed and press in against my back and doze there while I dozed myself.

There was supposed to be more of that closeness and more winter mornings when we had the fire going long before light and the tea made, and she'd come bustling in self-importantly from a preliminary tour of her territory, frosty-cold to the touch or with raindrops glistening on her fur.

I've lost, as well as her dear company, her good influence. She was so transparent that I knew her very well. I knew when she was anxious and uncertain and jealous and I knew when she was delighted with herself and with me. I knew who she loved and who she was afraid of.

She was so open that love could flow towards her like water over a weir and I loved her without reservation and so did my friends who minded her when I was away. I couldn't be unkind to her or even impatient with her and that made me better than I am. It was my dream to repay her for her goodness to me by helping her when she slowed down.

You may say that she was only a dog. But I once saw it said that dogs don't have souls because they don't need them.

Her innocence was so perfect that a human being could only aspire to it. And the way she ran into each day full of joy . . .

no carrying on of grudges, no regrets . . . was something to imitate consciously. The way she watched over me when I hit a tree and the car turned over and the windows burst, crouching beside me where I lay on the road. The way she allowed quiet to cure her when she got a thump from a van herself, sitting open-eyed in the darkest corner of the bedroom for two days until she could get going again. The way she signalled to me to give some food to her friend the dog from down the lane. She'd wait till I did it, then watch her friend eating with an unmistakable air of satisfaction.

I know that someone will say that most dogs have Molly's qualities and that I can get another dog. But it was this dog, so gentle and hopeful, that I shared a history with. It was this dog who, from the very first day, when I saw her at the back of a cage in the pound in Finglas, used to scrutinise me with a yearning look, as if there was something she could nearly understand. This one, an expert at slinking discreetly into hotels, who came on holiday with me. This one who was with me on the night of the turn of the millennium, when we hurried home because the fireworks frightened her and went to our usual early bed, perfectly contented with each other.

For a while we walked every Saturday in the hills above Dublin with men she greeted with adoration. She'd patrol us conscientiously, up and down, but then she'd take off ecstatically on the scent of deer. I don't want another dog. I want my Molly back.

In recent years I spent months at a time in New York, and Molly lived with friends on a farm, half an hour farther north in Clare. I'd come home on the plane that gets into Shannon around six in the morning and I'd be at their house while it was still very early and everyone was fast asleep. I'd let myself in and give one, soft whistle and immediately, I'd hear her scrambling down the stairs. She didn't even pause. She walked past me to the car and jumped into the passenger seat. Only the way she panted betrayed her excitement.

Those were homecomings it was worth going away for. I always knew exactly how many days it would be till the next one.

This time it would have been a morning in late May . . . light, with the birds singing . . .

when the little dog with her alert head and her white paws took up her place on the seat beside me and, both of us staring straight ahead, we started for home. But never again. Not that, or ham sandwiches in the heather, or hotels, or having our breakfast in winter mornings in the room that glowed like gold. And nothing for it but to go on without her.