DOG DAYS Pondering the relationship with man's canine friend BY BRIAN C. JONES

The other day, my wife and I were on a pre-vacation buying frenzy in Middletown, the shopping capital of Aquidneck Island, and had just entered a busy store when someone remarked with some alarm: "There’s a dog!" Not just any dog, as it turned out. It was our dog, Lucie. She had jumped out a window of our parked car. I thought I’d rolled it down far enough to cool the car, but high enough so an extremely smart, skinny dog couldn’t squeeze through.

As I was leading her outside, my fellow shoppers shot us some dirty looks, and a woman in the parking lot, who had witnessed the great escape, lobbed remarks about a dog’s owner who was guilty of multiple misdemeanors. My own verdict was that things had worked out pretty well, given how Lucie, who we believe is part greyhound, could have rocketed off in many directions, and instead, she’d come into the store to find us.

But the lady in the parking lot had a point — I was guilty; Guilty of misjudging the window height. Guilty, too, for bringing the dog on the shopping spree — it was too hot that day to leave a pooch in a car. But I’d felt guilty, too, about cooping her up in our house while we were gallivanting about Newport County. The fact is that owning a dog is an exhausting exercise in guilt.

Just writing about a dog makes me feel guilty. I could be using this space to give witness to another episode of genocide in Africa. I can just hear that overseer of Rhode Island’s moral compass, Henry Shelton, the anti-poverty advocate: "Thousands of folks are without electricity this summer because they can’t pay their power bills, and Jones is writing about his dog!" It’s actually worse. Imagine how many lights could be turned back on if I took the money it takes to keep Lucie going and donated it to households too dark to read this because the power company yanked their plug.

Example: Lucie got a skin infection, known as a "hot spot" (fellow dog owners are now shaking their heads knowingly), a couple of weeks ago, resulting in a late night trip to an emergency veterinary service that charges $65 just to get in the door, to say nothing of the treatment. That was followed by a not-inexpensive trip to my regular vet who runs a top-flight, top-dollar service. Or how about Lucie’s weekly visits to doggie day care in Massachusetts, operated by an ace handler who’s as accomplished an entrepreneur as he is at teaching a rascal like Lucie to come when she’s called.

Most of the people on the planet don’t live a life as rich as America’s dogs, and neither do, for that matter, lots of Americans. I don’t know how to reconcile this, just as I’m not sure how to reconcile how those of us lucky to be on the friendly side of the American economy make personal spending decisions.

That vacation we were shopping for cost more than our charity allocation. Still it’s our 40th anniversary, which we figure warrants some celebration. And I’m confident there are worse things to spend discretionary dollars on than a high-strung puppy who could have otherwise ended up in a gas chamber.

There is something very moving and fundamental about living with a dog. They remain a mystery. They have a psychic’s ability to read your every twitch — Lucie can tell whether she is going for a romp in the park or will be jailed at home, simply by the way I grab for my car keys and briefcase. But when she does get to the park, the first thing she looks for is something disgusting and dead so she can roll in it.

Dogs, like children, pull you from your smaller world. They get you out to the park, pull you past your waving neighbors. Then there are those touches — the way a dog rests its chin on your foot during dinner, or leaps deftly onto your bed in the morning to deliver a warm, gentle lick just before the alarm goes off.

I don’t have the answer for squaring the injustice of a society in which dogs live better than people. It’s not right. I cannot reconcile the individual decisions we make, knowing as we do about the lives of other people. That’s not right, either. I can only tell you about moments like the time the other day when Lucie had some choices of her own — she could have gone north, east, south, or west — and instead, she went into that store, looking for us.