My great-nieces introduced me to the phrase “cheese tax.” I thought they were referring to the duty paid when importing dairy products, but it quickly became clear that they were talking about dogs. “Cheese tax” is that variable percentage of human food offered as canine appeasement. Faced with the doleful, bottomless stare of a dog, those of us susceptible to cheese tax will always break. I am a sucker for cheese tax: part of my toast, my cookie, my burger, or my cheese always goes to whatever canine is watching me eat, saying with her sad eyes, “Can’t you see I’m starving here?”

Our dog Dolly was a master of the cheese tax. Raised by a man who sat her on his lap and fed her from his own plate, she was an 18-month-old princess when he died. After we adopted her, I sat on the floor twice a day for a month to hand-feed that dog from her own bowl. At the end of her life she returned to her princess ways, refusing to eat without an attendant to the process. Cheese tax, I thought, as I held out a handful of kibble sprinkled with the leftover chicken I had intended to eat for lunch.

Dolly died two weeks ago. 

She was our third dog, and each of those dogs had some quirk that demanded focused attention. Insulin shots and special diet, years of anxiety-reduction training, knee surgeries, thyroid and liver disorders: there has been a considerable amount of hands-on care in our canine relationships. That everyday physical care could be tedious, but it bound us tightly together—which made the loss of each dog that much harder. There were a thousand daily touches, a thousand glances, a thousand nuanced decisions. All of that care—all of that paying attention and planning—that was cheese tax, too. 

I was, I am, and I will always be a happy taxpayer. Dolly’s death—the sudden severing of ties and tasks that bound us together—leaves me untethered. I long to resume those daily responsibilities, the give-and-take of affectionate interrelationship. I miss the cheese tax. 

As I walked up on Goat Mountain yesterday, I thought about all those relationships where we are bound by daily responsibility, mutual dependence, holy entanglement. In reality, there is nowhere, and no being, to whom I don’t owe the tax. I owe cheese tax to George, to friends and neighbours; to the juncos and chickadees and downy woodpeckers, the garden, the creek. I owe cheese tax to the ephemeral streams of Goat Mountain and their luminescent moss. 

Any time that I willingly offer my focused attention, anytime I act for the well-being of the other, anytime I let myself live out our interwoven and essential unity: that’s cheese tax. Another name for it is love. And yes, love will inevitably end in grief. That’s just the way it is. I’m willing to pay that price.