Full disclosure is that I’ writing this a few weeks before you’ll see it. It ends up being that I can’t seem to write anything until I get this out, so I’m just going to do it.

Endings

I got my dog, Biscuit, in November of 2014. This was one of those things that I feel very strongly should have been a bad idea. I was fresh out of college, had a job that was definitely not long term, and was still living at home. I was super broke, and not always living my best life. But then I got Biscuit, and things just got better. I got a better job, I started grad school, and I had a new buddy to go hiking with. I started to get things together. Everything in life was on the up and up.

She was the sweetest puppy. Friendly and adventurous and easy to love. I was especially concerned to introduce her to my new boyfriend, Charles when she was right around a year old. He had never owned a dog, and she was definitely part of the package if we were going to stay together. It was lucky that he loved her as much as I did, and when he became a member of our family permanently, Biscuit didn’t mind a bit.

After we met Charles, we did a bit of moving, first to Minneapolis, then to Great Falls, Montana, then to Duluth. When we bought our house here, she was a major part of the decision. Biscuit loved this house. It has a great yard and lots of places for her to hide and snuggle and chew her toys. It was exactly what we wanted for her.

She was the flower girl at our wedding in August of last year, and we have so many delightful photos of her crawling all over our guests at the wedding. She went with us to a lot of places. She loved patio season and stealing bites of my food. She loved sitting in chairs and being one of the people.

She was a bed hog. She shed too much and covered everything in white hair. She could be stubborn and often played too rough. She stole my covers and would regularly counter surf in the kitchen. But she was ours. She was our family, and I think about that all the time.

Unfortunately, this is a case of us not knowing what we didn’t know. On March 6th, I came home from work, and do you know when your house just feels off? It felt off. Biscuit was in the living room, and she was about to die. She was in such bad shape. There wasn’t anything we could do, and she just…died. I felt so heartbroken. Charles was too. Our little girl had an undiagnosed heart condition common in Boxers, and the symptoms were just…normal things. She was slowing down, which we took to mean she just wasn’t a puppy anymore, and she occasionally had an extra heartbeat. That’s also common in active dogs. But her heart just couldn’t do it anymore. Even if we had been home, we wouldn’t have been able to do anything. It was just her time. In the twist of “you don’t know what you don’t know”, many boxers have terrible difficult-to-diagnose heart conditions that take them down young. One of them was our Biscuit.

We didn’t expect to lose her so soon, and it was a shock. Just days before she passed away, we had been talking about how good and happy with our life we were. We have a home we love. We are both working fulfilling jobs. We had a great dog to come home to every day. When she was gone, it felt like a big piece of that perfect-life puzzle was suddenly gone. We had talked about getting a second dog so that Biscuit could have a friend, but we hadn’t considered what it would look like to be getting a new puppy without her there.

Beginnings

Just days after we lost Biscuit, we were contacted by a dog breeder. I had reached out to them months before about a little sister for Biscuit. They had puppies available and wanted to know if we were still interested. We talked about it, and yes. The house is just too quiet. There are no little claws tapping on the hardwood, or snorts in the night. It’s empty here without a dog. After some back and forth, it happened.

So, meet Gravy. She’s 8 weeks old and has just gotten to leave her mom and come home. We drove down to get her and made the trip home. Was that stressful, given the COVID business? Yes. I spent weeks agonizing over it, but she’s here. Following COVID precautions during the drive to get her wasn’t a picnic, but we are happily quarantining back at home. Like Biscuit, she’s a Boxer and is slowly filling that hole in our hearts and in our home. We’re already so in love, and I hope that she doesn’t mind how much we talk about her older sister. I learned so much from having Biscuit, and I hope that it helps us make a few fewer mistakes with Gravy Girl. We had hoped that she’d be able to help teach her, but unfortunately, that wasn’t to be.

We still miss our girl but are excited to pour all that love into our new little friend. I’m sure you’ll see a lot more of her around here.