saying goodbye to roxy

I haven’t written much here about our dog of nearly fifteen years, Roxy. I just looked back through my posts and didn’t find much, but a picture of the two of us has been my profile picture here for ages. We had to put Roxy down last week, and it was terrible. I grew up with outside dogs, which is just not the same as having a dog in your home for nearly fifteen years.

I desperately wanted a dog when we first got married. Grant was not quite so enthusiastic, but he kindly went along with my wishes. We researched and researched and eventually landed on a goldendoodle from a breeder in Jasper, Indiana (funny that I’m just now seeing the connection with our first born). Grant is allergic to dogs, so he needed something hypoallergenic with minimal shedding. This was before the doodle craze, so everyone who asked us about what kind of dog we were getting looked at us quizzically. (Grant would call her a “lab hybrid” for years just so he didn’t have to explain himself). By the time we put our deposit down, there were only males left. Grant had always had female dogs and really wanted a girl that he planned to name Roxy, after the surf brand. But, again, he relented so that we could get a puppy sooner rather than waiting on the next litter and settled on a boy. We planned to name him Ziggy after one of Grant’s favorite Marley sons, and we even bought a Rasta collar and leash for our future goldendoodle.

The week before we were supposed to go down to Jasper to pick out which puppy we wanted, the breeder emailed me. She said that their family had taken the “pick of the litter” from their previous miniature labradoodle litter, but that they had three little ones and adding another puppy was more than they could handle right then. She said that she knew that Grant had originally wanted a female, so she wanted to ask us first if we wanted her. She attached a picture to the email. The file name was roxy.jpg. I opened the picture, and she was adorable, as expected. I immediately called Grant and told him that I felt like it was a sign that we were supposed to have this dog, already named the exact name he had wanted all along.

Grant told me that he thought we should go ahead as planned with the goldendoodle, but that we might as well meet Roxy since we had to go down to Jasper to see the new puppies anyway. Of course, we came home with Roxy. She was the world’s cutest puppy, and she was a handful. Potty training was mostly terrible, and we could never wear her out, despite our best efforts. We would meet friends who also had a new puppy at a local baseball field, and the guys bought these big tennis ball launchers that they would endlessly throw to the dogs. The guys wore out before the dogs did.

For the first ten years of Roxy’s life, we called her a “wankerdoodle” instead of a labradoodle. She was a wanker, a loveable one, but ornery nonetheless. We joked that she had at least nineteen lives because she lived through eating so many things that would have killed most dogs:

Once she ate pork bones whole, sneaking them off of my plate without me noticing until it was too late. The vet told us that the bones would likely splinter her stomach and that our only hope was to give her slices of bread with vaseline on it in hopes that it would somehow help her pass them without splintering. She survived, but this episode led to a lifetime obsession with vaseline. On more than one occasion, she ate entire containers, lid and all, of vaseline after that first taste.

She once ate an entire Costco-sized bottle of fish oil capsules that I had left on my bathroom counter still in its wrapping, thinking that she couldn’t get to it (ask me how disgusting it was to clean up that mess after she puked it up all over the house).

On Jasper’s first birthday, we had about forty people over, and I had made little sliders for lunch. While we were praying, she ate at least 60 of those mini Hawaiian rolls that I planned to serve the sliders on. I think actual flames came out of my head on that one.

My cousin, Brandt, hunts and always gives Grant venison sausage for Christmas. We were hosting Christmas one year, so Grant cut up a whole bunch of Brandt’s venison sausage and left it on the counter, thinking it was out of reach of Roxy. We greeted our guests, and Roxy comes flying around the corner to see who is there with slices of sausage laying all over her back, the only remnants of the what was supposed to be our appetizer for everyone.

Some of our best friends were getting married and had ordered a cake for their rehearsal dinner at a bakery right by our house, so I volunteered to pick up the cake. I had taken Roxy on a walk or something, so she was in the car with me for some reason when I picked up the cake. I had to run into the pharmacy to pick up something for Grant, so I barricaded the front seat where the cake was so that she couldn’t get to it – or so I thought. I come running back to the car after being inside for all of three minutes to find that she had already eaten half of the special order cake. I rushed back to the bakery and begged her to make another one in like three hours. We ate the Roxy-ruined one, and it was delicious.

One time, the kids wanted to take her to the park, so we loaded up in the car, but I had to stop at the grocery store on the way home. I order my flour and beans in bulk from an organic co-op, and I forgot that they were in large 25-pound bags in the trunk of my Pilot. We came back from our quick stop at the grocery store to find that my entire car was covered in flour. Roxy’s fur was completely coated in it, and her beard was a giant mess of dough.

I’m sure there are more stories. Those are just the first that come to mind. So you can see why we called her a “wankerdoodle.” But like us, she contained multitudes. She never once snapped or growled at anyone, she was always excited to meet new people, even if they didn’t much care for her. When our kids arrived, she would sit close to them, seeming to accept immediately that she would play second fiddle after their arrival. As they grew, she put up with their constant harassment. For years, it seemed like their favorite game was to see if they could make a fort for her that she would stay in, so they would pile blankets and pillows on top of her, leaving room for her to breathe but not much else. She just sat there, keeping them entertained. She was my best nap buddy, snuggling into the corner my legs made when I sleep on my side and propping up her head on top of knees.

When we moved out to Funky Farms, we no longer had a fenced-in yard, so we started taking her on more walks. She loved walking through the property, sniffing everywhere and looking for deer poop (her favorite). Roxy and the chickens seemed to like each other from the start. She just sort of sniffed at them, and they were never skittish around her. She slowed down once we moved out here, sleeping more and moving less. Roxy and I enjoyed a little second wind once the kids were both in school, leaving us home alone together a lot on days that I wasn’t at the office. We went on lots of long walks together, or she would snuggle up beside me while I worked.

She has been gone for a week, and we are really sad. We brought her home about six weeks into being married, so Grant and I don’t really remember married life without her. I’ve been thinking about how ingratiated she was in our lives, without us even realizing it. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been looking at pictures and old videos. Google Photos has face recognition, so when I type in “Roxy,” it pulls up every picture that she is in, even if she isn’t the focal point. What I quickly realized is that she is in the background of our whole lives. Early on, she was the subject of our pictures, but once the kids came along, she was often in the background, just happy to be watching, not pushing into the limelight, but present.

Roxy was our teacher, and I’m just now realizing how much I learned from her and probably still have to learn from her. She would screw up, but she didn’t seem to beat herself up about it. We screwed up and got mad at her, but she didn’t hold any grudges. She was always excited when we got home or a guest came over, always willing to find joy in the moment, even though she saw us every day. She didn’t need a ton of attention, especially as she got older, but she was always happy to receive it. She was always up for an adventure, even when she got older and couldn’t move as well, she still got excited about our walks. She rested when she was tired. She loved well, so well.

I really miss her.