I spend my days teaching dogs to be, for the people who need them, the very thing a nine-year-old girl was forced to be, all alone, for four hours, with no training and no help at all.

And there was something in that, once I let myself see it, that reoriented my whole understanding of my own life.

I had spent fifteen years making sure that no handler would ever have to face a hard thing without a steady presence at their side.

And I had come within a phone call of failing to do that for my own daughter.

I did not fail.