When Love Means Being Selfish

“You cannot use my dog to attract other girls,” my ex emailed from Taiwan. She could see on social media that I had been on a ski tour with a woman, and there were photos of the dog, Bhoga, bounding downhill in the broken snow of our ski tracks.

Not that I believed she had a say in how Bhoga and I spent our time. A year earlier, she had moved from Portland, Ore., to Taiwan to teach English, a mercy killing for our on-again-off-again relationship. There had never been enough trust between us. She had disturbing dreams of me tattooing strange things onto her body. What I really did to her was withhold love.

When we first got together, a snowstorm shut down the city. She skipped work and we skied through the streets. I later fell for her when she played cello in a bathrobe. But a year later, she would sometimes disappear for a whole weekend and call me for a ride home Sunday night.

My ex had brought Bhoga into our relationship as a little puppy. Eighteen months later, when she planned to leave the country, we agreed the dog would stay with me because Taiwan required a six-week quarantine for arriving dogs. It was unbearable for me to think of this sensitive pup, who trembled with fear when city buses trundled by, being confined in a concrete kennel for that long.

Bhoga was an unlikely lure for a new love. “She’s kind of homely,” my mother said when I brought her to Wyoming for a visit. Her adoption papers said German shepherd mixed with boxer, a common pet shelter euphemism for pit bull. She had a wasp waist and barrel chest with a rough brown-and-black brindled coat. The stripes made her brow appeared furrowed, and with her black muzzle and flattened ears, she could look murderous. People gave us a wide berth on walks. Even the name my ex gave her was ungainly sounding, a Sanskrit word for enjoyment, or indulgence.

Up close, though, Bhoga’s yellow eyes conveyed love. She was exceptional in ways I admired — polite, athletic and confident (except in the case of city buses). On the river, she would sit placidly on the nose of a paddleboard as we bobbed through white water.