Goodbye, Griff. You were a good boy.

Every day of my life for the past 12+ years, I’ve woken up, fed our dog, and let him outside. It’s been a reflexive part of my morning routine for as long as I’ve had one. He’d usually spend the day in my office with me (or going to the office with me, back when I commuted). Every day after lunch, we’d all take a walk together, weather permitting. Every evening, he’d curl up on the couch with us to watch a show, snoring softly for a while before my wife and I would let him out one last time and then put him in our bed for the night.

It’s funny; I never wanted our dog to sleep in our bed, but I lost that battle many years ago.

I never realized before now that I’m grateful I did.

Sunday, I found out I’d already gone through those familiar motions for the last time. Griff went to bed on Saturday night, and didn’t wake up on Sunday morning.

We at least know he was in his favorite place at the end; snuggled cozy in bed, peaceful, and with the ones he loved, and who loved him.

My wife and I adopted Griff just a few months after we got married almost 13 years ago. Griff’s been a part of our lives since before we even had a house, or a yard for him (come to think of it, we ended up fencing two different yards at two different houses just for him). He was with us since before I was a designer, or graduated college; since before I ever wrote my first line of code; since before we had our son.

Our poor son. He’s six. He’s never cried like this, at anything. He’s known Griff his whole life.

Griff was there for this entire married era of our adult lives. He saw us through virtually every job either one of us had, through three houses in two cities and states. Nearly a third of my time on this Earth was shared with that adorable little ragamuffin.

Griff was a rescue. We never knew for sure where he came from, or exactly how old he was. At our first visit to the vet, they estimated he was probably about 2–3 years old at the time, but it was just a best guess.

What little info we got from the rescue group was mixed. He was a stray, perhaps, or maybe rescued from a kill shelter. Or possibly he was a puppy mill dog—which seemed likely, given he was a purebred Yorkie—but no explanation seemed to fully add up.

We were never sure. I guess we never will be. But we often speculated about where he might have come from, and what he might have been through, before our paths happened to cross.

It began unexpectedly. We were on a trip to Bed Bath & Beyond (the beginning of all great stories) when we saw a sandwich board in front of a nearby pet store, announcing rescue dogs for adoption were there to visit that day. That sign did its job, and we took a detour that we had no idea would end up changing our lives.

We loved the dogs we saw there that day, but they weren’t quite the right fit for us. Still, the ball was now inexorably rolling, and we went to visit the rescue group’s kennels a few days later, to meet more dogs on a sweltering afternoon in July.

That’s where we met Griff the first time (the rescue group had temporarily named him Houston), tongue permanently stuck out of his mouth, panting from the oppressive heat.

There were vet treatments to get through (he’d been pretty neglected, and was underweight), paperwork, and house visits, too. The rescue group (Omaha’s Hands, Hearts and Paws) took its responsibility to give the pets a good home seriously. We needed official approval from our landlord, and to pass their rigorous scrutiny. But pass we did, and in a matter of weeks, Griff’s home was our home.

It took us a while to settle on Griff’s name. He was just “the dog,” or “him” for several days. Maybe even a week or more; I can’t remember now. I know we initially named him “Duke,” though, before admitting a day or two later that name just didn’t sound right. He wasn’t a Duke.

He was a Griff, as it turned out—and as almost everybody he met reaffirmed. Any time we told somebody our dog’s name, the response was always “Griff? Aww, he looks like a Griff!”

(No, not Griffin, and no, not Gryffindor; just Griff—though “Griffer” became a common affectionate nickname.)

The first few weeks with Griff were trying. We didn’t know him, and he didn’t know us. It took some time.

He wasn’t a snuggler. He didn’t like being close to us. My wife was determined to change that, though. It took time, but her loving persistence paid off. He eventually warmed to us, and soon, his favorite spot was next to us, wherever we happened to be (particularly if there was a blanket involved).

Given the choice, I know he preferred her to me, but I was fine with that. I know he loved us both, but she earned her spot fair and square.

Griff always wanted to be going wherever we were. The moment he saw shoes, or a suitcase, or grocery bags, he was in his carrier, waiting to go with us wherever we might be headed. He went on road trips and vacations with us, always content to sit in my wife’s lap in the car ride, however long it lasted.

In his older years, when his hearing started to go, he’d regularly go looking around the house for us when he realized he hadn’t seen us in a while. He tried to make a bed in whatever room we were in, to keep an eye on us, make sure we weren’t going anywhere without him.

I’m lucky to have worked in dog-friendly offices for several years. Griff got to visit many times—which he loved—and I’m happy he was able to make friends there. My coworkers would often send me DMs to tell me about the funny things Griff did that day. He tended to rocket into the first unsuspecting lap he saw the moment I unzipped his bag.

He didn’t always like other dogs. He was kind of funny about that, actually; he was an incorrigible curmudgeon, even when he was relatively young. He couldn’t stand too much noise or excitement, and would let you know with a loud bark if things were getting a little too feisty. Whether it was a puppy who just wanted to play, people running or roughhousing, or too much tickling, he would always jump in with a harsh vocalization, as if to say, hey you kids! Knock that off!

He always liked the older dogs, though. He was an old soul.

Griff is the source of my hatred of fireworks. For many years, he’d be too frightened to go outside for basically the entire month around the Fourth of July (fireworks were constant enough where we lived at the time to make me repeatedly fantasize about becoming a Batman-like vigilante who would terrorize inconsiderate jerks by launching their own fireworks into their own stupid faces). I’d often wake up around 3:00am, when the commotion had died down, so I could finally get him outside safely. I don’t think either of us ever missed that about Omaha.

Griff was hilarious. He was a lovable, clumsy doofus, who regularly slipped, tripped, fell off of things, or just got himself into jams he wasn’t sure how to get back out of.

He possessed an unearned fearlessness. He’d walk out on a narrow ledge, and then suddenly realize he couldn’t turn around—or maybe get up somewhere he couldn’t get down from—and start his desperate little growl for help.

Griff was mouthy, but in a polite way. He had this soft, earnest growl-bark he deployed whenever he wanted to get your attention. It was like a soft, sweet, gradually escalating “excuse me,” to let us know he wanted outside, or couldn’t get through a narrowly opened door, or had perhaps lost some food in an inaccessible place.

Griff desperately wanted to be able to howl, but just couldn’t. He tried his hardest, but could only come up with a high-pitched whine, not unlike a kid who can’t whistle but tries to recreate the sound with falsetto. Trying to get Griff to howl (which would just cause him to make silly noises until he inevitably just started barking at all the commotion) was a reliable source of hilarity in our house.

Griff always wanted to be at eye level with the people in the room. If there was an empty chair, he’d be in it (sometimes even at the dinner table, if someone left their chair open long enough). If he felt like he was missing out on too much, he’d get somebody to pick him up. My brother nicknamed him “Bazooka” for his habit of getting up on the back of the sofa and standing on your shoulder just to get a better view.

Griff loved blankets, and being warm and cozy. But given the choice, he preferred to use a piece of clothing that belonged to my wife, or to me. He loved a good spot in the sun—particularly if it happened to be by the fireplace. But in a pinch, a basket of fresh laundry, or perhaps a properly smooshed-down throw pillow would do the trick.

Like most dogs, Griff loved being vigilant at the window, guarding the house from unknown perceived dangers.

At first he hated only the mailman, and the mere creak of the mail slot was enough to send him into an uncontrollable frenzy. (The loss of hearing that came in his later years was not entirely unwelcome, for this reason.) Eventually, though, Griff’s rage expanded to other deliveries and workers, until pretty much any truck, van, or loud vehicle, and anyone wearing what might appear to be work clothes, was suspected of high villainy.

Griff’s terrier instincts could not be contained. He loved hiding under the ottoman, and playfully attacking our hands from beneath blankets. He chased bunnies and squirrels with relentless focus (at least, until his later years, when he seemed resigned to the idea that he couldn’t catch them anymore). Still, he managed to catch some bunnies (tragically), a vole, and even a couple of snakes. He always seemed incredibly proud about this, no matter how we tried to dissuade him from being the tiny murder machine he was bred to be.

More than once, he destroyed a supposedly “indestructible” toy meant for dogs five times his size in less than a day.

Despite those rare instinctive, efficient bursts of violence, however, more than anything: Griff was sweet.

Though he was hit-and-miss on other dogs, he loved every human he ever met. (Even the delivery drivers; though he’d bark relentlessly, getting close to that stranger always seemed to confuse his opposing instincts, and you could see the more benevolent of the two winning out, as that fiendish enemy began to look like just another new friend upon closer inspection.) Griff even liked cats—or, at least, was fascinated by them, if perhaps a little scared of them, too.

Everybody was a friend, to Griff. Every meeting was a cause for joy. Nothing beat seeing his cute little stub of a tail rapidly toggling back and forth in delight.

I think Griff knew how cute we thought he was. He mastered the art of putting his chin on things to look adorable when he wanted something.

Griff was the star of all our Christmas cards, before our son took over that gig.

He loved kids. I think it’s partly because he loved licking faces, and theirs were the easiest to get to, but I think there was also more to it than that.

Maybe he just sensed they were also as happy to see him as he was to see them.

Griff loved our kid especially. The first day Griff met our newborn son, he leaned as far as he could off the edge of the bed to get a look at the basinet, filled with loving curiosity at this tiny new human who had found its way into our lives. My wife and I had been afraid of how Griff might react, but it was for nothing; the two were close buddies from that moment on.

Griff hated water, and baths. But whenever we would give our son a bath as a baby, Griff would leap up onto the side of the tub—something he’d never done before, and never since—to watch the whole time, as if to make sure that little baby was ok.

Although Griff identified our kid as a mobile treat dispenser early on, Griff loved being by his side no matter what, at any age. Every time our son curled up to watch TV, Griff was there with him. Every night, when we’d read our son a bedtime story, Griff was in bed with us, too. I imagine to our only child, Griff was a little something like a sibling.

Griff even came to be at peace with the constant chaos our energetic young boy embodied as a rambunctious kindergarten, and learned to sleep through the rowdy football reenactments and wrestling matches happening on the couch beside him.

We knew our time with Griff was short, but we never suspected it was this short.

He had chronic kidney disease and GI tract issues. He’d been on a special diet and pills for years. His visits to the vet had become common. Still, most of the time, he seemed more or less like his old self, albeit a little more timid, a little less energetic.

Whenever we walked him, people would comment about how well he seemed to be getting around for his age; how spry he still seemed to be.

But he was up and down. Things got better, then worse, then better again.

We knew something was up. We were already trying to figure out what it was and get the proper treatment. Saturday was a bad day for him, but we took him in to the vet, as we often did. We got him what we thought he needed. He didn’t seem himself, but we thought he’d bounce back after a good night’s sleep.

We thought we had more time.

We had plans in our head for how we’d handle the end; plans that we never got to do.

We thought we had more time.

When you know a person long enough, you get to know a certain tone they can have in their voice. It’s one you recognize immediately and instinctively; a primal sound, reserved for only the moments when something is seriously, horrifyingly wrong.

It’s the kind of sound that makes you drop everything you were doing and sprint towards it at full speed, even before you have time to consciously realize you’re doing it.

I knew when I heard my wife’s voice. I knew before I knew.

All of us cried all morning, and on and off ever since. I’m crying writing this.

Our son has scarcely stopped talking about it. “Griff was the best part of my life,” he told us at one point, through interminable sobs. He was up hours later than normal on Sunday night, obviously exhausted but still inconsolable. The poor kid.

He’s not ok. None of us are.

You don’t realize how much of your life revolves around a pet until they’re gone. They’re there, every moment of every day, and you don’t even really notice it until they’re not, every moment of every day.

Every time I open the front door, my foot moves to block a little dog who’s no longer there, no longer trying to peer outside.

Every time food drops on the floor, I rush to grab it before he does, because the message that he won’t hasn’t fully propagated to my understanding of the world.

Griff spent his days in my office with me, and now every time I leave it, I turn back and leave the door open for no reason.

Every time we eat, I go to get food that’s no longer necessary, to put it in an empty bowl that no longer has a purpose.

Every time I get in bed, I shift my body to create a little space around the spot that’s now reserved for no one.

Neither my wife nor I know what to do with the basket of old, chewed-up toys that won’t ever be played with again. But that’s fine, because neither of us can bring ourselves to touch it anyway.

We all said our goodbyes yesterday afternoon, my wife, my son and I, in a private room at the vet.

We told Griff how much he’s meant to us all, and petted him one last time, all of us, all too soon.

We shared our memories, which I suppose is what I’m doing with this post; sharing the memory of a loved one, gone before we could say goodbye the way we wanted to.

So: goodbye, Griff. This wasn’t how we wanted it to end, but we’re glad you went peacefully, with us. We’re glad we had the time with you we did, and that we could give you the life we did.

You were a good boy, and we’ll always love you.