My name is Sarah. Cooper is a five-year-old golden retriever who has never growled at anyone: not the mailman, not the vet, not the toddlers who pull his tail.

That Saturday my fiancé Grant came over for dinner. He had been charming for eight months: flowers, funny stories, a ring my mother cried over. Cooper met him at the door with his usual wag.

Then Grant walked past him into the living room, and everything changed.

Cooper stopped wagging. He crossed the room in three slow steps and stood between Grant and me, low and still, his eyes fixed on Grant’s hands.

Grant laughed. ‘He’s jealous.’ He reached into his jacket pocket, and Cooper made a sound I had never heard from him in five years.

‘Let me,’ Grant said, and slowly took out his phone. Cooper relaxed a little. It was only a phone.

But for the rest of the evening Cooper did not leave the space between us. When Grant stood to refill my glass, Cooper stood. When Grant went to the bathroom, Cooper followed him and waited outside the door.

‘Sarah, I love you,’ Grant said at dessert, ‘but that dog has to go before the wedding.’

I looked at my dog. His eyes were on the phone still lying on the table, its screen lit with a message from a contact saved as ‘Dana’.

‘Who is Dana?’ I asked.

Grant said, too fast, that she was a colleague. But Cooper was staring at that phone the way he stares at a squirrel he knows is up to something.

I picked it up. Grant lunged. Cooper barked once, sharp and loud, and the room went still.

The messages went back eight months. Dana was Grant’s wife. She lived three states away. They had a house, a dog and a mortgage, and I had a ring.

Grant left that night without his jacket. Cooper watched him from the window, then walked back, put his head in my lap and sighed, as if he had finally finished a very long shift.

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