It is June 2024 and we are saying our final goodbyes to our precious Hexl. Almost 20 years ago I see a puppy on Craigslist and think, I’ll just go check it out and see if he’s cute, try him on, walk him around. I drive home with him curled up on my lap and tell me roommates sorry if this isn't allowed or something.

He sees me through coming out in my mid 20s, fledgling relationships, my first marriage and divorce, and this last 10 years of the longest relationship of my life with John.

He progresses naturally through his 19 years with only minor bumps and bruises, and slowly before our very eyes—completely undetected — begins to lose weight steadily until after one bout of gastro he is essentially a bag of bones that sleeps 22 hours a day. It is May 2024 and I take him to the vet and say, I would like to have this dog’s immunizations updated before we leave for a two-week vacation. And she says, This dog? This 19 year-old dog right here? She thinks I am there to talk about end of life care. He will not survive another stomach upset. He has a tumor in his mouth, one in his intestine, and any one of these things will either kill him slowly or bring him in for surgery which he will certainly not survive.

I am shocked, and she asks me to set aside my personal feelings and look at him with objective eyes and see this ancient, ancient dog that is hanging on for dear life. She gives me a quality of life survey to fill out as if I was Hex. It is brutal as it is illuminating. I text John tearfully that we need to talk and he is as incredulous as me.

It's a week later and in the long diagonal light of one Wednesday morning, I see the sunlight raking across the deep harvest furrows of Hex's very visible ribs and spine, I snap a pic and send it to John. A small trickle of blood appears at his nose, and I think first, Oh not again and then, How have I not seen this? How have I not seen-seen this? We carry him to all his favorite spots, we carry him down to the river, we carry him to John's folks house, we carry him to each visitor who comes by. I think constantly of Billy Murray's description of his last party with Gilda Radner. We cry a lot.

It is a week later and doggy death doula sweeps into our house—an incredible owl of woman, a maternal presence who is overflowing with care but also the authority and gravity of her calling. She explains to us the injections she will administer, one sedative, one lethal, and the signs we should watch for as he slips from his life. We sit on the couch: I am holding Hex, he is staring at John, she is slipping the needle in. This is just like when he falls asleep I think until it is suddenly exactly not like he is falling asleep. He is gone. Where do they go? I hear Clare Dane as Temple Grandin ask.

It is days earlier and John is digging a large hole in our backyard in direct violation of the county code in which burying of animals, people, or other loved ones on private property is prohibited and to which we give not one flying fuck. I procure a small pine casket, and we bury him underneath a Thai Constellation monstera that we see and see everyday. Our friends take very good care of us, and Chris memorializes Hex with a very cute drawing.

It is the fall of 2024 and John is traveling constantly back and forth to and from Dubai and we are actually relishing our lack of obligations keeping us tethered to the house but we are also constantly remarking on how much we'd love to have a dog again. A tiny shrine to Hex winks at us by our front door, his collar draped lei-like over the corner of his portrait.

I am seeing greyhounds everywhere I look and I am dreaming of having a Big Dog. I love their long lines and sweet dispositions. I see them on the bike path, I seem them at the park, I see them at the farmers markets. I find out nearly every single one has been adopted through a placement program—taking dogs from racetracks in Tijuana, Southern California, etc, and finding them new homes once they’re no longer profitable on the track.

John is increasingly looking at another miniature dachshund, which I love but also reminds me so much of Hexl.

It is December and I’m in Toronto for work, and John is calling me to say that the Dubai projects have all been cancelled, he should be home for the foreseeable future and also here is a picture of an incredibly cute dappled mini-dachshund puppy for adoption just 25 minutes south of us, in Nuevo, California. I give him the green light, knowing full well he’s already made up his mind, but also I know what it is to see a cute little long-one on the internet and just deciding.

I am home and we visit the puppy over Christmas break, he is just 6 weeks old and is burrowing into our arms and instantly falling asleep. On the way home I'm thinking I work from home full time now, and even though a puppy might be a handful, if we’re going to get another dog, I don’t think it would be that much extra work after the puppy is grown up and why not? I should just go for it.

I go back on those websites to look at the greyhounds up for adoption and find that, in the past four months, every single racetrack in California has been closed. Most of the programs that adopted out these retired racers are no longer operating. Two weeks later I stumble across a retired racing greyhound adoption organization in Phoenix, Arizona. That's only an 8 hour drive from here I think. They have a four-to-six-month waitlist, and their website dutifully informs me that there’s a home inspection process as well as an application and I think, Why not? Why not just put my name on the list?

It is the first week in January at 10:45 on a Sunday night, I fill out the application and hit send. It is 8 a.m. the next morning, and they are calling to say: We have four new dogs coming into LAX from Australia in three weeks. Would you be interested in one of them? I take one look at the dossier on Nonny and know he's the one.

It is today and Ferguson is an absolute menace, growing quickly from the puppy we brought home into a spunky, teething, curious, and gregarious little demon. In our made up human personality for him we decide that he only knows one sentence, only has one thought, only has one thing to say: "I bite."

Nonny is the elder statesman of the house, who gets the zoomies and terrorizes me at 6:11 a.m. every single morning for food and couch cuddles before we go on our walk to the coffee shop. The rest of the day he is horizontal, dozing in and out, waking up only for head scratches and to rest his head on my thigh. Every now and then he sprints through the house, leaping from the threshold of the kitchen, clearing a dog bed, two occasional chairs and the coffee table at high speed, landing gracefully 15 feet away into the corner of the sectional, where sometimes I am sitting, with a too-slow look of surprise spreading across my face as I see this 85lb missile rapidly approaching my head.

It is 6pm and I am holding Nonny on his back in my lap, massaging his giant muscles and rubbing the corners of his eyes to his soft groans. Ferguson is sleeping in the cushion crease next to me in the signature cinnamon bun swirl common to all dachshunds. John is cooking dinner. I am seeing in them all their trust and I am seeing in them all their simple appetites and I am seeing in them the exact moment in the future where I will go through Hex's final moments all over again with both of them and I am tallying every day as a dream.

The last photos I’d ever take in John’s folk’s house. We have our standard Christmas fete, the whole family on the day of, a big dinner. Before folks trickled in I stand in the foyer and snap a pic of one of John’s mom’s paintings in the hall, I post it to IG. It’s a house that holds zero bad memories for me. Every moment has been one where, since meeting John and accompanying him home some nine years ago, I have felt welcomed, loved and embraced. It is a magical home that feels like a museum, chock sky-high with art-major retiree bric-a-brac and books and antiques and mysteries. Tapestries. Relics. The backyard houses John’s dad’s cactus and succulent collection - the fruits of nearly 50 years of labor and passion. Scraped together on a civil servants wages.

It’s all gone. The Eaton fire ripped through the whole neighborhood and in a single night it all went up in smoke. Everyone is safe, we were able to get docs and heirlooms out the night prior. They have only the clothes they had on their backs. John sits up at night muttering he should have been able to save more. “I will never not be able to see the flames coming down the mountain.” he says.

The folks somehow in good humor. “The site recommended a coat that was on sale and I thought “Oh, that’s cute, but I already have a coat just like that one.” Wait, no! No I don’t! I have zero coats! I don’t have anything! Hahahaha”