Fiona Apple’s recent decision to postpone her South American tour to stay home with her elderly and ailing dog may have caused some upset among her fans, but she’s won a whole pack of new ones who thoroughly support and understand that decision all too well. I am one of them.

Mordred told us when it was time for him to go. I’d always heard that a suffering animal would do that, but he was my first dog, and I was thoroughly unprepared for how clear and desperate that message would be.
“Mordred” was a massive name for a mammoth dog, the Irish Wolfhound my now-husband owned when I met him. He became mine also, and I his — so fiercely that he escorted me down the aisle when Douglas and I wed a year and half later. We were not always so gracefully aligned.

The night I met Mordred, he tried to kill me. I tried not to take it personally, as he was being a good dog protecting his Dad from the strange lady who’d apparently come over to eat his face. It was our second date, and I was deeply enamored of the notion that in New York City, I’d found an attractive, single, straight 30-something man with the wherewithal to be responsible for the welfare of two animals who had to be escorted outside to poop.

Read Lean on me: Loving and losing a dog on CNN Living