I wrote the first few paragraphs of the story many years ago, imagining that I might one day turn it into a memoir. I had recently visited the Erdrich-family butcher shop, which still exists, in Little Falls, Minnesota, though it is long out of business. Standing in the back yard of the butcher shop’s living quarters, I thought of Nero. When I was a child, I had a record of a staging of “King Lear,” so I was attuned to the notion of tragic loss. Because the life of a dog is short and speechless, I witnessed Nero’s fierce vigor and his decline into madness. But even if I began with an attempt to remain faithful to the truth, I couldn’t help veering off. I added a skinny uncle (who resembles no uncle of mine), and then the girlfriend and her vicious spaniel. There was no going back. Full story at: