A Dog Has Died

Images of the dog’s fur and tail repeat multiple times throughout the poem. The dog has a “shaggy coat” (Line 5), unwelcome shedding “hair or […] mange” (Line 23), fur that defines him completely with a “sweet and shaggy” life (Line 34). His tail is particularly worthy of description: “fan-like” (Line 13), “envi[able]” (Line 37), and “golden” (Line 44). The repetition of these specifically animal traits of a tail and shaggy fur contrast with and ground the speaker’s anthropomorphizing of his pet. These snapshots of the dog also explain how a materialist copes with grief: Though now he imagines a dog heaven for his pet, he really memorializes his animal through happy memories—the same way he pays tribute to the people he has lost and for whom he cannot picture some kind of magical afterlife. Finally, these traits symbolize the speaker’s hope for transformation, not into an animal, but a more spiritual, more dog-like, joyfully sensory person.