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Snow’s one of the greats, dog wise. She walks in that poodle way, head high and legs lanky, as we navigate the city streets together. Snow doesn’t bark at squirrels, skateboarders or people with umbrellas, rare for a real poodle but not an imaginary one. Nor does she require expensive veterinarians, heavy sacks of dog food or poo bags. Snow has no foibles of any kind, but one: she moans in her sleep, snout rising from the pillow beside me in a long lament. Snow is an open-hearted dog, and sorrow wants to be let out at 3 a.m. What her sorrow is, I can’t say, because Snow has no backstory. Imaginary lives are best lived in the near future, not the boggy past or overrated present.��

Snow joined me a year ago as I sat on a park bench, thinking. I was writing a tally of my life so far, as a woman bumping into 70; what I have and don’t have. On the “don’t have” side was a pet. I had two real dogs when I was married, both poodles and both black. Cyrano was a standard from when the marriage was good; Pierre was a miniature from when the marriage was good and when it became not so good. The dogs shrunk with the marriage.

Since my divorce I haven’t wanted a pet of any kind. But people I admire say pets are the better part of us and I worried I was missing that part. Novelist Siegfried Nunez writes pets not just as characters but as a central part of being human. I considered a rescue cat, but the gauntlet of forms, interviews and approvals drove me to inaction. Instead, Snow trotted over to my park bench and sat on her haunches beside me.

After that, Snow came and went. She’s no Jimmy Jimereeno, the invisible friend of that little nosepicker, Ramona, in J.D. Salinger’s ”.” Jimmy Jimereeno was never not there as he and Ramona bathed, played and slept together, until Jimmy was run over by a car and killed. (Shortly replaced by Mickey Mickeranno. My own imaginary childhood friend was Mr. Nobody. Make of that name what you will. Likely Ramona and I shared a certain lack of parental attention.)������

Snow comes when I need a bit of courage. In real life, I plan to visit Ireland this fall, to meet cousins from a village at the southern end of the Wicklow Mountains. I can get nervous travelling alone. But Snow is unfettered by needless fears and joined me on a fantasy prequel to the real trip.

Here’s one bonus of travelling with an imaginary dog instead of a real one. No interdictions. How did Snow get across the Atlantic Ocean? I don’t know. It didn’t figure in my fantasy. I wasn’t going to put her in the hold of an airplane, and then what, quarantine? My imaginary dog and I jumped over that part to the foggy afternoon Snow and I strode the Wicklow Way, and there met an Irish dog named Rain. Rain was not a poodle but tall and thin like one, with a drab grey coat that turned radiant in the fleeting sun. Snow and Rain ran far ahead on the bare mountain paths, always coming back to check on me. When I sprained my ankle on a slippery slope, Snow stayed with me while Rain ran for help. They became momentarily famous local heroes.��

Is Snow compensatory for a life that might have been better lived, one without darkness and divorce, when the poodles were black instead of snow white? Possibly. Snow does howl in the night. But she isn’t introspective. I might wonder where these precipitation names come from — precipitate, precipice? — but Snow doesn’t share the modern fascination with our inner lives. Snow simply is, there to be accepted or rejected her on her own terms.������������

Here’s a plot twist, and not an imaginary one: Last month my family arrived for the launch of my new book — brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews. My own kids who lived nearby piled in too, so I had a full house. Every bed, couch and cot was deployed; every blanket I owned draped over someone’s shoulders when they shuffled into the kitchen for breakfast. This was happiness.

One afternoon of the full house I arrived home to tremendous excitement. “You’ll never believe what happened,” said my brother Tim. “A white poodle came to the front door and walked right in.” Tim showed me pictures of this dog on everyone’s laps, like she’d been here all along. “We all fell in love with her,” my family clamoured to tell me.

I studied the photos. She was smaller than Snow. But obviously was Snow manifested. That real Snow arrived when my house was full of real companions made me wonder if maybe I was a bit lonely making up a dog to live with.

“No collar,” Tim said. “We named her Pickles.”��

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “Her name is Snow.”

My daughter Mary had the good sense to knock on the neighbours’ doors. The woman two houses down wept when she was reunited with her poodle. I don’t know what she called it, and I don’t want to. I felt like that white dog really was destined for me.��

“Aunt Cathrin,” said my niece Claire, visiting from Montreal. “Maybe this means you need a real white dog in your life?”��

Perhaps. But then what would happen to Snow? And the puppy Snow and Rain were going to have together, named Sleet?