Our new routes made no human sense. We crossed and circled suburbs in absurd patterns. Often we walked up one side of a street and straight back down along the other, something I would have judged boring and never done. Now I saw that to a dog, the opposite side of a street was a fresh adventure. A new nature strip to investigate! Different trees! We crossed busy roads that I'd avoided, or went down dead-end streets I'd dismissed as uninteresting, and so made our way into new territory. We discovered pavement gardens, and a park we'd never visited. We found $5 in a gutter. We came across a cafe we hadn't known was there.

Minnie began visiting our dog-sitter, Christine, who lived a few streets away. She'd been taken to Christine's house once, about 18 months previously. Now she led the way there unerringly once a week, even if we'd set out in the opposite direction. She simply refused to turn left or right until, by degrees, we found ourselves at Christine's gate. Christine would come out, cuddle Minnie and fuss over her until she was ready to continue on our way.

There came a Friday when we had one of the best walks we'd taken. Nothing special, really, but the weather was perfect and we wandered along quiet streets to a community garden we'd visited once or twice. Minnie sniffed about between the raised beds overflowing with pumpkin vines and herbs. I imagine there were rich smells: rats, feral cats, a fox perhaps.

The following day Minnie walked to the end of our street, then turned for home. We discovered a lump in her belly. At an animal hospital, we were advised to leave her overnight for observation and tests. On Sunday, at about the time we should have been setting out for our walk, a phone call came to tell us that the cancer had spread to Minnie's liver. Her red cell count had plummeted and she was bleeding internally.

What could we do? We went to her, taking her favourite food. After she'd eaten, we kissed her beside the ears, thanked her and wished her a safe passage. Then a calm and deeply considerate young woman, the kindest of the kind vets we've had the good fortune to know, ended Minnie's life.