Blog Classics: Saying Goodbye to Max

Author’s Note: I originally published this blog in January of 2019. I have edited it slightly to reflect the passage of time. It’s about the long, happy life of an old, happy dog, and how I found the best way to say goodby and honor him when the time came. It does talk about his final days, which may be triggering for some.

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My dog, Max, was never supposed to make it to his first birthday, let alone his fourteenth.

When I adopted Max with my college boyfriend, he was six months old and he had one week left to live. The Humane Society in LA had already scheduled his euthanasia, because the shelter, like so many others in LA, was overrun with pitbull mixes.

To my everlasting gratitude, there were local volunteers who would photograph the animals scheduled to be put down, and post ads about them on Facebook. That’s how I found Max. I had just graduated from college, I had a good job I thought would last, and I really wanted my own dog. My boyfriend–not a dog person–was humoring me.

A photo from around the same time

I wish I still had that photo, but I can picture it so clearly. Max was this absolutely stunning brindle color, and his little body was curled up in a tiny ball that looked like a tortellini. He stared up at the camera with sad eyes, and I had to meet him.

We went to the shelter that weekend and found him right away. Max was around six months old, and he was in rough shape. He was malnourished and probably dehydrated, because he was in a cage with three or four other dogs, and they wouldn’t let him eat. (I used to say you could teach a dog anatomy class off his ribs.) He’d been a puppy on the streets of LA, so one of his legs had been broken and healed together slightly wrong, and there was a notch missing from one ear. None of that deterred me, but there was another problem: In the picture he had looked tiny, but as soon as he stood up to greet us, it was obvious that he was a much bigger dog than we’d expected. The weight limit for dogs at our apartment building was twenty-five pounds.

I wanted him, but I was trying to be responsible. So my boyfriend and I went through the entire shelter and looked at every single other dog available. No exaggeration: every one of them. There were probably sixty or eighty other dogs, and plenty of them were small enough to suit our needs. It took maybe an hour and a half to see all of them, and when we were finished I came back to Max. “Let’s just meet him,” I said, because of course I was wavering.

This particular shelter was so overcrowded that you had to meet dogs in the hallway, so we went out to the hall to wait for a handler to bring Max out on a leash. I sat down on the floor with my back against the wall and my legs stretched out in front of me, and I didn’t move as Max came loping around the corner, because I wanted to be nonthreatening. The handler came forward, and Max came right over to me, stepping his front feet over my legs so he had two legs on either side of my lap, and he just sort of collapsed sideways and sighed, like he was finally home.

And I said, "Well, shit. This is my dog."

I had no idea what I was getting into. We were able to fix it with the landlord, but Max’s early months were still really hard. He would drink any amount of water that was placed in front of him, because he didn’t know when he’d get water again, so you had to be careful not to fill the bowl too much or he’d puke. His separation anxiety was so bad that I was constantly tripping over him, and it took two months before he’d let me go to the bathroom by myself. When he first came home he had a liver infection, and there was a horrible 72-hour period where he had diarrhea all over the apartment, every ten minutes or so, because everything ran right through him.

I never once considered giving him up. He was my dog.

Max and I as babies.

I should mention that his name, Max Farrington, comes from an absolutely terrible 1999 TV movie called Silent Predators. My boyfriend and I had met in a small film production class. The instructor was a producer on that film, and referenced it a number of times as kind of a disaster. Of course, the class begged him to get us a copy of the movie (this was before you could find any video online somewhere), and he humored us by lending us a VHS copy. We threw a big party, watched the movie, and invented a drinking game on the spot. Drink every time the camera goes into “snake vision” (red). That wasn’t often enough to satisfy a bunch of partying college kids, so we added that you drink every time someone says the name of the shady mayor who fails to save the town, Max Farrington.

My dog was named after an impromptu drinking game.

By the time Max was eighteen months old, I’d been laid off from two different jobs, and it came to my attention that my college boyfriend and I both loved him more than me. He had moved in with me after college, he said, because he didn’t have anywhere else to live. He was talking to his high school girlfriend all the time, and one thing lead to another– this part of the story is very boring.

When we broke up, there was never any question that I would be keeping Max. He was my dog. But at twenty-three, I found myself in this moment where I couldn’t handle LA or the television industry, I had lost the relationship I’d been so invested in, and I was dead broke. I packed up my car and Max and the two of us drove to Madison. I didn’t have a job or a place to live, but I had friends here and if I didn’t do something I was going to drown.

This is the part of the story where Max’s life and my life became two halves of the same thing. He wasn’t just my best friend; during that time he was often literally the only reason why I got out of bed in the morning. Taking care of Max got me out of my own head enough to keep going, and taking care of me became Max’s sole purpose. Over the next two years, everything in our life changed. We found a new place to live that was not a great fit, but was right near a fantastic coffee shop where the owners didn’t care if I brought Max in with me. We explored Madison, especially the dog parks. I got a job, and dated a few guys. We spent a lot of weekends up in Chippewa, where Max forged a special friendship with my dad.

Eventually Max and I moved into our own apartment. It was two hundred and fifty square feet, but I loved it because it was ours. It was the first and only time we lived alone, but I was never nervous about my safety because I had Max. He gave me purpose outside of my job: I had to take him places, I had to get him things. Having Max forced me out into the world when I really wanted to retreat and give up.

 In 2007, Max and I met my future husband, Tyler. Max liked him okay, but seemed to view Tyler as a weak creature that I had inexplicably invited into our pack, probably out of some sense of pity. He was ok with me allowing Tyler into the pack out of charity, but a little baffled that I was willing to go so far as to let Tyler sleep in our bed. That was more or less his point of view on Tyler for the rest of his life.

After not very long at all, we all got a house together—Tyler, his dog, Max, and me. I got pregnant, and Max

swore to be the baby’s bodyguard forever and ever. We married Tyler, and eventually we got our baby.

Many of my friends and family know the story of how when Mattie was just a few days old, asleep in her room in our tiny house, I suddenly realized that I didn’t see Max. When I went looking I found that he’d jumped the four-foot railing into her crib, because he just couldn’t stand having a barrier between them. Mattie was still asleep, her blankets untouched. Max’s body language was guilty. He knew he’d done something bad; but he couldn’t help himself. He just needed to be closer to her.

Through all of this—moving across the country, marriage, kids, several careers—Max and I had a bond I never imagined I’d be lucky enough to find. My sister Beth once said that you can have pets your entire life, but everyone only gets one dog. One dog who shares your heart, who shares your most formative years, your life, your feelings. That is who Max is to me. The dog of my heart.

In his wonderfully long life, Max had many adventures. The first time he saw snow, we had only been living in Madison a few days, and he decided that the thing to do was try to outrun the snowflakes. Since he’s half greyhound, I had zero chance of catching him. Luckily he was microchipped, and after a few panicked hours I was able to pick him up at the Madison Humane Society. I’ll never forget his happy impatience when I arrived, like, “Finally. Where have you been?”

There was the time he lost a humiliating fight to a cat, or when he got a hold of my nephew’s pet chicken, and I chased him around my parent’s house trying to stop him from biting down and killing it. I was far too slow to catch him, of course, but I kept him distracted long enough for my dad to come outside and throw a softball at Max’s head, stunning him and causing him to drop the chicken, who was terrified out of his mind but still alive.

Once, my mom and dad had a racoon living in an old car in their shed. It took a swipe at Max from inside the car, and even after I locked him in the house, Max wanted revenge so badly that he jumped through a window screen to get outside. Unfortunately for him, we were on the second floor. He galloped around my parents’ roof in frustration for a while before I finished having a heart attack and got him back inside.

Physically, Max has always been a source of absolute wonder to me. When he was young, watching Max run was an amazing experience. He tried to chase down a deer once, and I maintain that if the deer had stayed in the open field instead of heading into the woods, Max would have caught it. I have no idea what he was planning to do if he got the deer. It wasn’t just speed, though: Max could jump. Once when we were visiting a dog-friendly video store (this was back when there were video stores), Max was offered a treat, and in his haste to get to it he leaped onto the counter like a frickin’ velociraptor—four feet on the floor to four feet on the counter. I still remember the look on the clerk’s face.

He was not, however, very good in the water. I still remember taking him to the dog park that has a pond. Max looked at all the Golden Retrievers and Labs gracefully sliding through the water to fetch floatie toys, and I could just see him think, "oh yeah, I can do that." He jumped in, and had to helicopter his skinny little deer legs just to keep his nose above the waterline. And he was so proud of himself.

I read once that a percentage of dogs can actually sense their owners’ feelings, and I absolutely believe it. Max felt what I felt. When I was upset, Max knew, and he would come find me. When my kids were little and we’d play hide and seek, they never realized that in order to find me, all they really had to do was look where Max was standing. If I was behind the curtain, he was in front of it. If I was under the table, he was standing next to it, wagging his tail and waiting patiently for me to come out. Max was not good at hide-and-seek. Or being away from me or his kids.

We had so much fun when he was young and strong, but I was surprised and delighted by how much I enjoyed Max’s senior years. When our family dog Luna took over alpha responsibilities, Max went into a sort of semi-retirement. Up until the last few months of 2018, his health was excellent. All he wanted was to follow the kids and me throughout the house and just be with us. He enjoyed snuggling and being pet, but mostly he just wanted to be nearby, so he could feel like he was still a good bodyguard.

Just a few weeks before he died, the kids were playing outside and I kept him in because of the cold and ice. He paced around crying at the door and windows because he wasn't out there protecting them.

Toward the end of 2018, Max’s back legs became very weak and unsteady. He was diagnosed with degenerative myelopathy, an incurable, progressive disease of the canine spinal cord. He had likely had it for years, but beat the odds to keep going despite the prognosis. Max already had three lesions along his spine, and more would be coming. The paralysis would move up his spine, and eventually kill him.  

I realized that our time was limited. So I made a plan to throw a massive party for Max on his 14^th birthday, January 1^{st, 2019}. Instead of Christmas cards, that year I sent out photo invitations to my dog’s birthday party.

The party was, in my opinion, a great success. The kids got really involved in the planning and decorating. Our local friends came, and we had dog-themed food (puppy chow, pretzel rods that looked like sticks, meats and cheese cut in the shape of bones, etc). We beat up a piñata shaped like a cat. We watched part of Silent Predators, while I feebly tried to explain the logic of drunken college students. Max got presents –dog treats and cheap toys with squeakers that he could murder. My sister, a professional photographer, drove three hours to document this party for me, for which I shall be eternally grateful. I found out years later that she took a special class to learn how to do indoor pet portraits beforehand.

On Max’s last night, we had a different kind of party. We moved the massive L-shaped sofa together with the big ottoman to form a giant bed, and the girls and I slept on this with Max right in the middle of all of us. Tyler was on a cot on the floor right next to everyone. It was like a giant slumber party—not a goodbye, but the granting of a wish: that Max might be involved, right in the center of everything. That is all he ever really wanted.

The next morning the girls went to a friend’s house, and I had to say goodbye to Max. A vet came to our home, where I set up a little nest on the floor for us. As I sat with Max, the girls’ two favorite stuffies were nearby, so their familiar smell would reach him. And then our life together ended exactly as it began, with him in my lap, and me telling him he was a good boy.

As part of my job, I study folklore and belief systems from any number of cultures. There are many common susperstitions, myths and themes that spread across different belief systems –the vampire, for example, is a universal idea. Another universal idea that I have found is the act of cutting off your hair when someone dies. It symbolizes your grief, an external indicator of the the terrible alterations happening within. Before I said my last goodbye to Max I cut off my long braid. When the vet took his body away, I tucked it in the blankets with him. Max took a piece of my heart, so it seems only fitting that he take a piece of me as well.

Saying goodbye to the dog of my heart was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. At the same time, though, I got 14 years with a dog who was never supposed to live. And I am so grateful that I had time to celebrate him, to say goodbye, and to arrange a peaceful passing. If you have to lose your heart dog, I can't imagine a better way.

Epilogue

I wrote this blog on the day Max died: January 5th, 2019. Seven years later, as I move it over to my new website, I am happy to report that this story has a coda.

Almost two years after Max died, in November of 2020, I was doing what everyone does during a global pandemic and in the midst of several personal crises: looking at cute pitbull puppies on Petfinder. And I saw this face:

It wasn't exactly Max–that would have been too hard– but it was so close that I stopped breathing for a second. And I said, "Well, shit. That's my dog."

I kind of thought Max sent him.

Brody (we rarely use his full name, Police Chief Brody Bean Olson) is six now, and as an adult, he's almost nothing like Max. Where Max was clingy, Brody is skittish. Max disliked other dogs and was motivated by chasing a tennis ball, while Brody loves every dog and human alive, and generally uses that love as his excuse to constantly misbehave.

But they both do raptor jumps. They both cross their dainty deer paws, and gaze up at me like I'm the center of the universe. They can both run like the wind, and they both took it upon themselves to protect my children–Max by following their every baby step around the house, and Brody by literally sitting on them so they can't leave.

Brody is his own weirdo dog: beautiful, jumpy, and, as my older daughter says, "love-aggressive." But even as I write this, as I cry myself through reposting this blog, Brody had to come lick the tears off my face.

I still kind of think Max sent him.