My neighbor's dog died the other day. The cyclone fence between our homes didn't insulate me from the loss as much as I would've liked.

The first day I met Prince was the only day I didn't like him. I was considering renting this house, standing in the backyard and felt I was being watched. He stood stock still on my neighbor's porch, eyes locked on mine, looking like a statue, painted camel brown with patches of black. Even by German shepherd standards he was a proud dog. His solemn introduction to me that day was almost regal.

He was lean, with a broad chest tapering at his back. His ears stood 90 degrees from his long muzzle, with his chin held high to size me up, straight on, before coming off his porch, moving with purpose, to get a closer look.

The prospect of this dog next door did not appeal. We have a cat, and our dog would probably have barking contests have Prince. And then there was the thought of being glowered at, every day, by those big black eyes.

The first few times I came through the gate after moving in, we'd size each other up, Prince and I, just like that first day, but we grew on one another, getting a closer to the cyclone fence each day. In time we became friends. He took to running back and forth along the fence line with our dog. They barked at one another but only infrequently, a kind of tough guy hello. Prince was selective as to when he barked and so when he barked it sounded important.

We establish a routine. I would come home from work, and open the back gate, and the dog race along the fence's north south axis would begin. Invariably, Prince would start by digging a tennis ball out of the wooly patches of grass along the fence and nosh it while he bounded back and forth, dropping the soggy thing occasionally for an emphatic bark.

Sometimes I'd come up and curl my fingers around the steel coils of the cyclone fence. He'd stop and square up with me, our noses close to one another. He still managed to look dignified, even when his mouth bulged with tennis balls.

I took care of him infrequently when the neighbors took trips. It amounted to my pouring food into a dinged-up mixing bowl. He would drop his tennis ball in the bowl, and eat the crunchy dog food around it. I'd run my hands through his course coat and along his rib cage that flexed as he ate.

When he emptied the bowl, he'd pick up the ball and follow me around, trading the one in his mouth only if I could find another natty ball for him to chase down instead. When I threw it, he bolted from a standstill with a graceful lope that got him across the yard in fast seconds. He would always try to stuff two balls in his mouth before relenting to another trade.

This winter, I saw Prince less and less, and during the long January rains not at all.

A few weeks ago I saw him for the first time in a while, out on the porch on a sunny day. He didn't move until our dog barked. Prince gave a look to the grass below the porch and started down the steps. It was almost as much as he could manage. I knew then he would never run again.

His hind legs were wobbly and unsure and he hunkered down to keep his center of gravity low. He was enthusiastic but feeble, lurching to the fence. He was still standing erect with the vanity I'd become so fond of, but only through sheer exertion, which left him too weak to keep a ball he'd picked up along the now difficult route to the fence. It dropped from his mouth and he watched it go.

It was a degenerating illness, attacking his spine, crippling him from the back forward and shattering his pride slowly, in the weeks it was taking to kill him.

The last days of his life he was inside, with his family, letting go of what made him Prince until the end came.

A few nights later, in the backyard, I stood along the fence and peered into a darkness absent of tennis balls. In my head, a lame eulogy; that he lived a long life. But there's no comfort recounting the accomplishments of lives lost to me.

The cyclone fence was more substantial that night, even in the dark. I reached out for the cold steel coils and curled my fingers around their diamond shapes. They were unyielding, but not so strong, I thought, to shield me from a dog's death.

It occurs to me only now that it wasn't his death that defeated the fence. It was his life.