I’ve replayed the scene in my mind far too many times.

Walking down a silent, snowy Bank Road hand in hand with my husband, Jim. Seeing a white SUV in the distance. Realizing we needed to get our dog, who was bounding out of sight, back onto the leash.

Calling. Calling. And then Jim saying, “Let’s stop calling. We don’t want her to come now.”

As if his words foretold her fate, she suddenly came, and Jim said in a voice I’ll never forget — horrified, helpless — “She’s going to get hit.”

It took days for me to stop seeing the image night after night as I closed my eyes, a nightmarish rerun I couldn’t erase. And of course, it will never go away.

But the image has been supplemented by others in the rollercoaster weeks since that night in December, some touching, some hard, some comical. Terri, wrapped in so much gauze she looked like she’d just stumbled out of a Civil War infirmary. My teenage son, tenderly stroking the little bit of fur not covered by bandages and telling her he loved her. Feeding her by hand. Coaxing pills down her throat. Carrying her up and down the stairs.

Early on in the ordeal, when the pain of what had happened was particularly great, I told Jim I wondered how people made it through calamities involving, say, children. She’s just a dog, I told him, and yet I feel as though our world is unraveling.

Sure, she’s just a dog, Jim said. But we still love her. And love is love.

Terri is a terrier mix who came to us with that name when we happily discovered her at the Humane Society five years ago. “We can change it,” I suggested to my then-9-year-old son, knowing she’d had the name all of 48 hours. But my son liked it, and I came to appreciate the alliteration: Terri, our Terrific but Sometimes Terrible Terrier, I’d call her.

Island life has been good for this little dog. KVI Beach. Island Center Forest. Dockton Woods. After years in the city, where she seldom experienced life off the leash, she came to know the canine pleasures of Vashon.

And of course, with that energetic terrier personality, she needed walks — lots of them. It’s always been our burden, as well as our joy — the tyranny of a dog who must be walked. I’d urge my husband to take her with him when he went running, my son to take her when he walked into town. And every time I could slip off with her, I would — always with leash in hand unless we were far from a road.

So on that snowy Thursday night a week before Christmas, when the Island seemed transformed by the gentle power of snow, I suggested to Jim that we take Terri for a walk. She’d been cooped up all day and was desperate for a taste of the outdoors.

In hindsight, I realize our mistake was not simply failing to put her on her leash — letting the snowy hush of the evening lull us into complacency. Our mistake was that in our own exuberance at being outside in the snow, Jim and I lost track of her.

What happened after she got hit is another set of unforgettable images:

Waiting in the cab of the SUV — with a driver who was as kind as could be — for Nell Kaufman to make it through the snow from her Dockton home to Fair Isle Animal Clinic where she works.

Feeling Terri’s tail — the first real sign of movement from her — gently thump against my thigh when my son, out of breath from a half-mile run into town, showed up.

Watching her stand up, walk gingerly, take a treat that Nell offered her.

It seemed, miraculously, that she was OK. Bruised. Sore. But OK. Nell sent us home with pain meds and anti-inflammatories. I couldn’t believe our good fortune.

We were scheduled to leave the next night for a flight back east to visit Jim’s relatives. But the next morning, when Terri still seemed like the walking-wounded, we decided I’d come a couple of days later, and that night Jim and Peter left for our Christmas holiday without me.

I actually thought it’d be a delicious few days, tending to a dog who was on the mend and relishing the quiet of our home. But the next morning, Terri did not act like a dog on the mend. In fact, she looked worse. As soon as Fair Isle opened, she and I were back, and Nell decided to take an X-ray. Thirty minutes later, she called me at work to tell me the news. Her voice had a tone of utter disbelief: “Her neck is broken.”

With another snowstorm headed our way, she sent Terri and me to Lynnwood, where a veterinarian hospital staffed with neurologists was expecting her. Friends met me in West Seattle, and we began the drive-from-hell — Terri in my arms, wincing at every bump in the road.

There, we learned more about her delicate situation. The break was bad. Surgery would be difficult and exorbitantly expensive. The neurologist decided to keep her there for a few days, stabilize her and send her home with a neck splint held in place by some 30 yards of carefully wrapped gauze. The hope: that with time and a kind of doggie bed rest the bones in her neck would fuse together naturally.

I never made it back east. I spent Christmas morning on the couch, stroking my dog and reading a book. And today, more than a month later, we still don’t know if the bones are doing what they need to. She’s still in her elaborate wrapping, which — despite several re-dos — seems always bedraggled.

In spirit, though, Terri is fully back. She’s exuberant, eager to play, desperate to be done with her rehabilitation. An incorrigible patient, she refuses to accept her fate. Sedatives have now been called into play as we make our way down the final and hardest stretch.

Just a few weeks ago, during an appointment for a rewrap, Nell told me her own remarkable story about her recovery as a young woman from a broken back; she too — at her father’s insistence — opted for bed rest rather than surgery. “And look at me,” she said, smiling broadly. “I’m doing fine.”

She said something else that day that gave me pause: In her nearly 29 years as a vet, she’s seen dogs with broken necks before — either dead or paralyzed. On this particular day, Terri stood on her back feet begging for treats, lunged at another dog in the waiting area and pranced to our car.

The support for Terri sometimes seems extensive and remarkable. A friend lit a candle for her in a cathedral in Germany. Another has given her brief Reiki sessions. Yet another bought her a doggie bed so fine my son wanted a teen version for himself.

And every day, one member of our family or another gives her a gentle, face-to-face talk, muttering words of encouragement, urging her to let the combined force of nature, care and love heal her.

You’re just a dog, we tell her as we hold her brown eyes in ours. And love is love.

— Leslie Brown is the editor of The Beachcomber.