I used to call our dog Terri the Terrific but Sometimes Terrible Terrier.

Now I call her Slumdog Millionaire.

She has a certain raffish charm about her — the “slumdog” part of her name. And she’s lucky as all get-out.

Terri, as I noted in a column earlier this year, was hit by a car a week before Christmas. Her neck was broken. Not fractured slightly, but badly broken. That she walked out of Fair Isle the night of the incident was remarkable, we told ourselves later, when we realized what she was up against.

She got a brace for her neck and was wrapped in 50 feet of gauze that covered almost her entire head, neck and torso, and we were told to put her on bed rest for four weeks. Then six. Then eight.

It’s an elusive concept to a terrier — bed rest. We thought it would never end.

The whole family went to Fair Isle on the sunny Saturday morning in February when Nell Coffman, our vet, finally unwrapped her, revealing a matted little ball of fur, a dog with the worst hair day imaginable.

Don’t ever use a leash attached to her collar again, she told us. Watch for any signs that her legs are starting to lose some mobility (a sign that spinal cord damage is setting in). And maybe you shouldn’t let her run around too much for awhile, she admonished with a smile.

That was ten weeks ago.

Today, Terri the Terrier is as boundless and beautiful as ever. She leaps into the air to catch a Frisbee, sometimes doing literal somersaults in her effort to grab the disc. She picks up sticks that look more like logs when she’s at the beach. She pokes her nose deep into our woodpile in search of whatever critters might be hiding there.

And more times than I can count, my husband, son or I have buried our hands in her tousled, ginger-colored fur and caressed her in amazement. Our miracle dog, we tell her.

It’s my joke in the family that Terri is our spiritual advisor. She lives only in the present, I’ve noted on occasion. She loves us unconditionally. And she’s nothing but utterly grateful whenever we give her something she loves — from a treat to a walk.

Now, it seems, she embodies even more wisdom and carries even more moral weight in our family.

Here she is, an animal that was at death’s door, now vibrant and full of life — a reminder of life’s fragility as well as its resilence.

We could see her as a dog with a shadow hanging over her: How fully healed is she, really? Will the bones in her neck begin to give way, as the neurologist said was a possibility? Or we could see her for what she is — happy, healed and ready to play.

More often than not, we opt for the latter and grab a Frisbee.

— Leslie Brown is the editor of The Beachcomber.