Loa (2012 – 2026)

Loa was not just a good dog, but rather, the best dog. And I know that all dogs are good dogs, and all dogs are the best dogs; that’s just how dogs are. But the reality is, when I say it, I need you to understand I really mean it. Every dog is the best dog but Loa really was the best dog.

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We got her when my son was very young. She was, of course, a shelter dog, because shelter dogs are the greatest dogs; we saw a bunch of dogs that day, including an excitable cannonball of a pitbull puppy that (in wanting to play) knocked our son back horizontally like, five feet, as if he were a henchman getting blown away as collateral shotgun damage in an Arnold Schwartzenegger movie. So that dog was not going to be our dog. But that day they said, “You’re also scheduled to see Peaches,” and we did not know who or what a Peaches was.

Peaches was this little red dog — a puppy, really, maybe nine months old, and she trotted out and diligently followed behind our wandering child, keeping a protective distance but staying close enough to follow. She’d follow, then sit. Follow, then sit. Super cool, super chill. I drove her home, and all the while she kept trying to leave her seat and ride with me as I drove. Which wasn’t easy, but I managed. She helped drive me home that day. Always wanting to be with her people.

I’d argue that wanting to be with her people was her fundamental trait — the thing that drove her, always. Even now, up to the end, even with cancer hanging heavy on her poor muzzle, even when she couldn’t really see anymore or hear anymore, she knew where we were and would come to the room we were in. She would panic a little if we were out of sight — so we spent a lot of extra time being there, being present, and reassuring her with pets, touches, and extra snacks.

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We named her Loa. We’d been to Hawaii a couple times and knew that Loa meant something between long and a lot, and she was both of those things — here she was, this long, gangly dog when she sprawled out, and a whole lot of dog. Not in a needy, too-much-to-handle way. She just had a lot of love to give and we had the love to give back. So: Loa.

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She was always so good with our son. She was our dog, but also, his dog — they are, or were, the same age, after all. Loa was our first true family dog — we’d had dogs before, obviously. I brought a dog to our relationship, a gloriously hairy black Belgian sheepdog named Yaga. And my wife and I got a taco terrier, Tai, to join Yaga, and those two were fast friends. But Loa was the first for the whole family.

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Tai, the chihuahua-fox-terrier, had found her one true best-friend-forever in Yaga. They were fast buddies, and she was like his little co-pilot. When he passed, something went away in her, too, and she did not want to be bonded to anyone or anything new. She tolerated our child, but really didn’t like Loa at all. This, despite Loa loving Tai oh so very much. Loa just wanted to hang with her new little friend. Tai just wanted to plot a complicated murder. (Chihuahuas gonna chihuahua.)

(For reference, see if you can spot the aforementioned murder-plotter.)

So when Tai passed, it seemed time to get Loa a new friend. And, as it turned out, a sister — in spirit, if not literally. Enter: Snoobug.

We got Snoobug at the same shelter. And again we saw a number of dogs that day and had Loa with us to take the temperature — and she had a blast with all the dogs because that was Loa. Loa got along with everybody. She had infinite love to give. Any of the dogs could’ve been a match for her, really.

But when we got in the room with Snoobug, the two sniffed each other, gave some licks, and then both just laid down together. Like they’d always known each other. So Snoobug came home with us, and they were bonded after that. They went out together, slept in the same bed together, ate together. It’s why we call them sisters — it’s like they grew up in the same litter.

(That photo of the two of them above is, of all the dog photos I’ve taken, the one I love the most. Sometimes a photo really captures a spirit and sometimes it doesn’t, but that one does so well it feels almost supernatural to me. I note too in that photo that Loa was definitely the dominant dog in the pairing, but played like she wasn’t. She was a gentle beast.)

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I’m sobbing like a fool as I write this. Funny I guess how we sometimes cry more over our pets than we do some people. Maybe that’s not strange. Our pets are with us so much, so often, and they’re these like… little perfect pure beings. They don’t mean us any harm. They’re an unalloyed good. They want to love and be loved. And be fed. Hot dogs, ideally.

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Loa’s eaten a lot of hot dogs in the last couple weeks. Like, an unreasonable amount. They weren’t something she was supposed to eat because of — well, I’ll get to that in a minute. But when you’re terminal with cancer, you get all the hot dogs you goddamn jolly well want. Hot dogs and turkey breast lunchmeat and even today she shared a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with me. It’s one of the things I’m glad about — she was still eating, drinking, sleeping well. And I know that wouldn’t last forever.

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Loa almost died once before, big-time. She’d had bladder stones — and as it turns out, was prone to making them, a mobile canine bladder stone factory. She also loved to get on her back and have you rub her tummy, and our vet posited that this position was also perfectly optimal for working bladder stones into bad positions.

So we gave her meds and food to break them up, but one got lodged in her urethra and, stoic dog as she was, she failed to let us know this until one day we found her standing in the kitchen, shaking violently and going to the bathroom on herself. Which she didn’t do! She never, ever, ever went to the bathroom in the house. (Not even now, with all her systems shutting down — she dutifully made her way outside.)

So that day, we rushed her to the vet and she stayed there, in emergency care, for a week. But she pulled through. She had cancer, too, later on, but our groomer — thank your groomer! — caught it and we got it removed before it could do worse damage.

Though in the end, a new cancer, or maybe that cancer, still caught up to her. I guess that’s how it always goes with cancer. Still, fuck cancer. Dogs should be immune to it. Cancer shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near them.

Dogs are proof we live in a good and loving universe.

Dogs getting cancer is the proof that we don’t.

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I hate this. I don’t want her to go. To be gone. It’s enough to make you never want to get another dog again. We will, of course. George Carlin was right — life is just a series of dogs. But the pain of this is so hard, so deep. This one fucking hurt, man. I feel like I’m dying inside. And yet it’s what we owe them at the end. It’s part of the price at the start. You make that deal the first day you take them into your house. Whatever it costs you then, it’ll cost you this at the end, and pay this price because it’s a mercy they can’t do for themselves — and ironically, often enough a mercy we can’t do for ourselves for each other, either, as people. But for them we can do it. And we have to do it. Even though it feels like the worst thing it is the best, most necessary thing. They give us so much. So this is the thing we owe.

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She was ready to go. We weren’t ready for her to go. We would’ve kept her here forever if we could’ve. What a great dog.

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Here’s why she was a great dog. The best dog.

She was calm. She was loyal. She was sweet. She was a complete goofusy doofus. She was fun. She was easy. She was a good guard dog. She was great on a leash and great off one, too. And she was smart, holy crap. Took almost no training and yet she never went in the house, knew how to knock at the door (or ring sleigh bells we put there) when she wanted to go out or come back in, she knew that if you said widdle paws at her she’d get down on her side and bring her two little paw-hands up to her muzzle and simulate petting, and that meant she was going to get petted so good, until you stopped, which meant she’d do it again, and you’d pet her, and she’d literally do this forever if you let her.

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The cancer stole her in small pieces, though she didn’t suffer long with it. We had options to diagnose and treat, but none of them were really real — she was fourteen years old and any treatment would’ve been both costly in money but also costly to her, in pain. Her quality of life would’ve cratered and all just so we could’ve maybe, maybe had her around for a few months.

It was really only in the last two weeks that you could see the pieces of her going away — her eyesight, her hearing, her ability to smell stuff. The way the cancer in her mouth grew bigger. She’d sometimes appear lost in the room she was in. A kind of walking ghost phase. I tell myself now and told myself then that putting her to rest is literally that: letting her rest. The dog she is and was, well, went away. We were just giving her the peace she needed.

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But god that fucking sucks. All the high-minded talk of what we owe them and the peace they need, it still fucking sucks that they get to come into our lives like this and be such perfect companions and friends and furry family members and then the universe gets to take them away again long, long before we are ready. It’s fucking stupid and it’s not fair, and cancer fucking sucks, and fuck all of this.

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Okay, sure, she had a few less desirable traits. Did she eat poop in the yard? Sure. Who doesn’t? Would she, while on a walk or in the yard, be able to take a split-second’s worth of time to dart her head into the brush and come back with a baby rabbit or groundhog? Fine, guilty — she loved all creatures but preferred loving baby woodland critters with her teeth. (And seriously, she did this very very fast.) Did she, just the other day, in the throes of this cancer, somehow poop on a garter snake? Fact check: true. She pooped on a snake. I don’t know that this gets you any points over the rainbow bridge in the doggy heaven side of things, but she did it, and the snake was fine, if absolutely perturbed by it. Honestly, if you ask me, it was the snake’s fault. Loa was perfect. Shut up, snake. Get pooped on.

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We don’t know what kind of dog she was, by the way. We never did any genetic testing. I always assumed she was somewhere in the middle of a hound slash retriever slash Rhodesian ridgeback DNA party. We just said she was a “red dog,” because she was a sweet red dog. Like Clifford if he was just a regular-size dog and not a gargantuan mutant.

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I don’t really know how Snoobug is going to handle this. They were sisters, really, through and through.

But also, Snoobug is an absolute dipshit. And please understand I say that with full love in my heart. She’s the sweetest dipshit. But Loa had the brains. All the brains. Snoobug is like a dice cup — her brain is a random encounter chart in D&D. You shake it up and some days she doesn’t know how stairs work, or what side of a door to be on when it opens. She will literally change her habits every few months. So I don’t know what this will do to her. I hope, I guess, her brain just kind of forges ahead. Blissful ignorance. I know her heart won’t forget but her brain is definitely moth-eaten underwear and maybe that’s a nice protective way to be for yourself. We should all be so lucky.

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I could talk about my dog all day and if you never met her I feel like that’s sad for you but maybe reading this you know her a teeny-tiny bit better. I can’t stand that she’s gone and I will miss her forever. She was the best dog we ever had — and no shade to out other dogs, they were the best too in their ways — and we’ll never see the like of her again.

We drove her home 14 years ago, and we drove her home again today.

I miss her.

I can’t stop crying at missing her.

I hate this, this fucking sucks.

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Loa died today under an old, tall crabapple tree on a blanket set amidst a carpet of blooming violets. She was surrounded by her people. She is at rest.

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She was a beautiful dog, so I feel it essential to show you with more photos.

And this is the last photo I took of her, from a good moment today: