Yesterday, Caperton Gillett Creative had to say goodbye to our chief morale officer, Dave.
Dave, Lord Puppypants von Buttstripe, Brave Dave, was my baby. He was mine from the moment I saw his picture, even if he did have to go through a couple of foster homes to get to me. I fell in love with his grumpy-looking little face, cried when he was adopted, cried again when the rescue called to tell me he’d been returned, and fell even more in love with him when I got to meet him in person. He immediately crawled right over me to get to Mykel with horrible prescription-puppy-food breath, but I didn’t take it personally.
Dave’s life started out hard. He and a sister were the only surviving puppies in his litter, and he was the only surviving puppy of the first well-meaning person who took them in. He was brought back to life by the absolute angels at Friends 4 Life, which is where I came into the picture. His name at the time was Trooper, which is fitting, but when we met him, it didn’t take long to realize his name was Dave. He was just… Dave. Just a guy. A nice guy. Dave helps you move and doesn’t complain about it. Dave buys you a beer and doesn’t expect anything. Dave Brubeck was cool, Dave Bautista is cool, and so was my Dave.
Rough start notwithstanding, Dave was the happiest dog ever. He loved everything and everybody, and it was impossible not to love him back. He never met a stranger, which was good, because he was irresistibly pettable, with ears that would shift back into Delta Formation when you reached toward him to give you more room to scratch his head. And he was just so incredibly fluffy, with a magnificent tail that curved over his back like one of Tina Turner’s discarded wigs. We didn’t know what breed he was — some mixture of husky and shepherd, probably — but when people asked, we said he was a Standard Pomeranian.
Nobody didn’t love Dave. Nobody. Just looking at him made you happy. When he was feeling frisky, he’d play fetch with himself, play-bowing to a toy before flinging it in the air and then running to fetch it. His favorite game was to bring you his spit-soaked squeaky bone, drop it in your lap, and then grab it away the moment you reached for it.
His adventures are too numerous to count. Ask me about his first time at the beach. Ask me about the way he’d howl along with the firetrucks when they drove past my apartment. Ask me about the time he stole a squeaky duck from a pet photographer. Ask me about his first snow day, trying to catch snowballs and communing with the spirit of his husky ancestors.
While Dave was the sweetest, bounciest, friendliest dog ever, he was also chill. He didn’t want to bug you — he just wanted to be in the room you were in, and being close to you was enough. Up until he was too creaky to make it onto the bed, he would tuck us in at night — lie on the foot of the bed until we fell asleep, and then go sit on the dog bed by the window to gaze outside until he fell asleep. He could sit for hours with his stuffed hedgehog between his front paws, nomming contemplatively on its nose and thinking deep dog thoughts. When he would come to get you, sometimes it was because he needed to go outside, and sometimes it was because he wanted you to watch him drink water, and sometimes he just wanted you to scratch behind his ears and gaze into his eyes and affirm him.
Namasdave.
Toward the end, he got old and creaky, with arthritis and two ACL injuries and, ultimately, cancer, but he still followed you around until you settled on a room to be in so he could be there, too. He still went on walks to sniff the everything. He still did a little tippy-tap dance to beg for carrots whenever you had carrots, even if the dance had become somewhat more subdued. He was infinite puppy crammed into an elderly body.
Dave was 17. We knew this was coming eventually, although that doesn’t make it any less devastating. Every night before bed, I would tell him he was the best puppy in the world (accurate), and very loved (hugely, cosmically accurate), just in case that would be the last thing he heard from me. And yesterday, surrounded by people who loved him, it was.
I’m sincerely sorry for everyone who never got to meet Dave. If you’ve noticed a hole in the universe today that wasn’t there when you woke up yesterday, now you know why. Pet your puppy for me.