My dog Charlie died at the beginning of COVID
Charlie died in my arms on March 18, 2020, at the age of ten and a half, possibly due to pancreatitis, possibly due to pancreatic cancer. I don’t know for sure because I don’t think it’s that important for me to know.
(I know I just made it seem like this story is gonna super heavy and a lot about death. Which is good, ‘cause like, okay, expectations are set.)
So, of the many things I remember about the immediate aftermath, I think what sticks out the most is the image of Georgie, Charlie’s little brother, coming to terms with Charlie’s death with the speed of a psychopath.
One moment, as Charlie was taking his last breaths, Georgie was distraught and crying. And then right after Charlie was gone, Georgie carelessly walked on Charlie’s face, putting the full weight of his small brown paw right on Charlie’s skull.
I remember pushing him off and being like, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
George was unabashedly doglike in his response. He did not give any indication that he felt deeper. And I was disappointed because maybe I wanted him to be like Hachiko. Like, maybe I wanted him to give indication that he was ready to die of devotion and a broken heart.
I started dog-shopping even while Charlie was still alive, but degrading fast — even when I wasn’t one-hundred-percent convinced he was dying. I told my best friend, Jordan, what I was doing: stalking Petfinder for small white dogs that look exactly like Charlie. I kind of wanted Jordan, who had also lost her dog not too long before, to name that I was being insensitive. Because I felt like I was being insensitive. I wanted her to be like, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
But instead she sold out her husband. She was like, “No, this is normal. To be honest, Aric was doing the same thing, too.”
I started engaging in the act of dog-shopping, as I told myself that my actions were some weird performance art that leaked out due to grief. Like, grief was making into a weird asshole.
I obsessively created this Goldilocks dilemma for myself. I told myself I shouldn’t replace Charlie with a dog that is so obviously his doppelganger because people will definitely judge me for it. But I also didn’t want to replace him with a dog that looks nothing like him, one that would leave me forever feeling empty inside. I was looking for something just right.
I ended up emailing a Westie breeder. I was like, Sup? You have cute white dogs?
She was like, “Yes. The puppies are due in July. Are you interested?”
And I was like, What the fuck? July? My dog just died. Like, he just died.
It was too soon. And all of the Westie Facebook groups I was stalking were full of white people who had these inside jokes about Westies that I found startling and off-putting. They were like, “You aren’t getting a new pet. You are getting a new boss. LOL!”
I thought, man, I really do not want a dog to be the boss of me. I really don’t want a dog to tell me what to do. Charlie was not a dick like that.
Charlie died before Washington state’s first Stay at Home order. The order was announced just five days after his death. As a result of all of the uncertainty during that time, my work came to a full stop. My clients went on pause. I didn’t have anything I was responsible for. I would only bill $150 the following month.
It was great.
I felt like I was dying on the inside while acting numb on the outside. So it was nice to look at all of the work cancellations and be all like “whatever, man” about it.
I amassed a shit ton of new plants during that time — and if I want to be poignant about it, I would say it was to fill in this care-taking hole that Charlie’s absence created in my life. But I prefer to frame it as: I just wanted something to do and obsess over and be distracted by.
I was relieved that I was told to stay at home and not see anyone or do anything. I was relieved because it spared me from having to explain to people while I was grieving, over and over again, what had happened and why Charlie was gone. I was glad I didn’t have to deal with people who don’t think dogs are people too.
Georgie was spending a lot of time alone by himself, usually under the couch, but sometimes he would spend hours alone in his crate. I found his sadass behavior super cute and comforting. I told myself that I had been wrong, and that he actually isn’t a psychopath. And I am not the only one who feels the way I feel. Like, we feel the way I feel.
I would look at George and experimentally say, “I guess you’re my favorite dog now. By default. I guess you’re my favorite dog because I have no other choice.” Because, remember, grief made me into a weird asshole.
I amassed a lot of information about pet psychics during the Stay at Home order. I read books and memoirs written by pet psychics. I watched hours upon hours of pet psychic readings on YouTube. I cried when people reconnected with their beloved animals — as I also raged and shook my fist at the TV all like, “This is fakeass shit! This fucking psychic is a capitalizer of pain!” I read countless articles trying to figure out how pet psychics do their thing. I learned that there are people who believe that animals can be reincarnated. My family is Buddhist, so I get the idea of reincarnation.
I fantasized about how cool it would be if Charlie was reincarnated into my next dog. I also thought about how creepy it would be if Charlie was reincarnated as a human being because then it’s like, what? Am I supposed to be best friends with a baby now? What if the baby is white (because Charlie was white)? Like, what? Am I supposed to be best friends with a white male baby now?
I decided that Sonya Fitzpatrick was the most legit pet psychic of them all.
Like — as someone who doesn’t believe in ghosts, doesn’t believe in God, actively hates astrology — I decided that if pet psychics could commune with deceased pets, then Sonya would be the psychic I’d believe the most.
I looked up her rates. I think it was something like $400 for an hour of her time. I told myself, “I could give up $400 to talk to a brilliant profiler that says fake ass shit that people in distress want to hear. I would pay $400 to pretend to talk to Charlie again.”
I didn’t go through with it. I think I was scared it was a slippery slope. If I start talking to and believing in psychics, then I might start believing in God and astrology, too.
The risk seemed too great.
I got into some weird dynamics over email with a pair of Havanese dog breeders. They were still business partners when I started emailing them in the month of April. By the month of July, some shit clearly went down between the two of them, and they broke up. (I don’t know what the shit is. I only Facebook stalked them for four hours only to learn nothing because sometimes people are good at being private.)
With the two of them though, I was making perfunctory steps toward getting a new dog.
Admittedly, my view and experience with dog breeding is pretty limited, but if I may be so bold: It seems like dog-breeding is near-exclusively a white woman’s game. And not just any kind of white woman — like, not one of the chill, go-with-the-flow ones.
Dog-breeding seems like the domain of uppity white women who like to correct you on your grammar and say stuff like, “I don’t know, can you go to the bathroom?”
I often felt vaguely scolded in emails for asking questions about what colors these dogs come in and how much they weigh. (I asked the questions about color and weight because I hypothetically wanted a dog that looked like Charlie enough but not too much like Charlie — I hypothetically wanted a dog that was at least 12 pounds like Charlie, before he was in heart failure and started losing weight.)
My questions probably came off superficial and like I was looking for a new accessory and not a new family member to love forever and ever.
Which is legit. I wasn’t really looking for a new family member to love forever and ever. I still hadn’t even sold myself on a new dog. I was just pre-planning for my future self. I knew that my future self would be ready for another dog at some point, and that bitch will be so pissed once she realizes what ‘COVID-induced dog shortage’ means, when she learns she has to wait an additional six months or whatever, once she felt ‘ready.’
I wasn’t ready in April, but I was like, “Hey, maybe in January, it won’t feel like this anymore.”
The pair of breeders (okay, that sounds hilarious) kept putting me off. One dominated the conversation and kept telling me that their breeding plans were on hold because of COVID. She kept telling me, “Check in next month.” She sounded cranky and acted like I was a nuisance. I did not care at all. I was psychotically cheerful with her and littered my emails with smilies and winkie faces.
And I faithfully did what she told me. In April, I checked back in and was told to check back in next month.
In May, I checked back in and was told to check back in next month.
In June, I checked back in and was told to check back in next month.
In July, I checked back in and that was when she told me her entire operation has been put on pause. Check back in December.
She did not express any sort of contrition for yanking my chain for months or for being curt to me over email.
I wanted to be like, “Fuck you, Anne! I fucking hope your daughters grow up to become housewives!”
Instead, I was like, “Sure! Okay!” because you can’t actually make wishes for people’s children to them without bearing repercussions, man.
I was about to shrug it off and move on with my soulless and robotic way of acquiring a dog for my future self — when Anne’s partner, Debbie, emailed me on the side, in secret, and was like, “Psst, FYI, Anne and I broke up, and we don’t work together anymore. I’m planning on breeding right now. You interested?”
I was like, “Oh, cool. Did y’all break up because Anne is a fucking honorless bitch?”
No, I actually said, “Yeah, I’m interested.”
New Dog was born back in October. She slid out of her momma, I dunno, toward the beginning of the month? I learned about it via text message, and I told myself, “This is what my dad must have felt like when I was born! He probably didn’t learn I was out via text though!” — I had been so removed from the actual process of birth, you know?
I was sent pictures of the puppies. There were four of them, two of whom were females.
I asked for a girl dog because Charlie was a boy dog, and I’ve only exclusively had boy dogs (because they tend to be cheaper than girl dogs, and Viets love a good deal). As a consequence, I’ve become hella familiar with dog dicks and not at all with dog vaginas. As a consequence, I feel a ridiculous amount of anxiety thinking about the prospect of dealing with a dog’s first period, even though I valiantly battle my own each month like it’s NBD and I’m a motherfucking warrior.
I asked for a female dog because I almost started feeling self-conscious over how blatantly I was trying to recreate Charlie. I asked for a female dog because I got super anxious about my internalized dog misogyny (like for real — that is not a joke). I told myself that if she’s a girl, I will get away with my weird creepy dog shit a little bit more.
And I am still totally dead inside, by the way!
New Dog is coming to live with me and George next week. Friends ask me if I’ve named her, and clearly I haven’t. People get so excited when I tell them that I’m getting a new dog, and their excitement is like getting a flashlight to the face.
I was on a video call with my friend Anna Rebecca yesterday, and she’s known that I’m getting a new dog for a while. Like, I’ve repeatedly told her this non-news.
But yesterday, she still asked, “WHEN ARE YOU GETTING THE DOG?”
I was like, “Next Wednesday.”
And yesterday, she still was like, “OH MY GOD, I CAN’T WAIT!”
And I was like, “Yeah, man. Yeah. Um, it’s cool.” And I tried really, really hard to smile for her sake.
I’ve been refusing to buy new shit for New Dog, not because of I’m coming from a place of pain, but because I’m coming at this logically — and I’m trying to be green. Right now, I intend for New Dog to just use Charlie’s old collars and tags because she’s a dog and dogs can’t read worth shit and if she gets lost, the person who finds her isn’t gonna be like “I dunno if she looks like a Charlie, man” before they call my number.
I keep trying to prepare George because it seems like something really annoying is about to happen to him, and the poor idiot doesn’t even know it. I keep talking to George and asking him if he will be nice to New Dog. And he’s basically a sociopath, so he’s like, “Probably not!”
And I’ve been like, “Okay, that’s fair.”
I’m not worried. I know that I will eventually become totally obsessed with New Dog and I will stop feeling like shit whenever I think about Charlie. I just need New Dog in my face to start feeling the change. I just can’t get excited about someone I don’t even know yet, man. You know? It’s just hard to disentangle this abstractness from the ghost of my very favorite dog.
And I know she’s going to be completely different from him no matter what, and I know I will be fine with that because dogs are superior beings, and we don't deserve them.
(Though, I'm open to the fact that everything I just said is lies 'cause maybe ghosts are real and pet psychics are right and New Dog is actually the reincarnation of Charlie, and when I get her, I will know and be like, “Holy shit, Charlie, is that you?” and he will be like, “Yes! I’m back for round two with you, Mom!” and I will have to upend all of my non-belief systems.)