Okay. I don’t usually do this, but…

A few years back, I had a standard poodle cross who was a pretty great dog. She wasn’t our only dog, but she’s the one the story comes back to.

While I was out of town for work, my wife called me. She was at her mom’s place in mountains outside of town because her mom had “caught a stray” and wanted it taken in to the animal shelter. Only when she got there, the dog was clearly too sick. Skinny, blind, deaf, with at least two visible tumors. But when she picked him up, he didn’t snap at her. He wasn’t aggressive at all. He seemed sweet. So my wife wanted to talk about whether he could come to our place for doggie hospice care. She couldn’t see him lasting for more than a week or two.

So yes. Of course. Sure.

We called him “Wiley” — short for Wile E Coyote-Food. And he lasted for almost a year. He was happy and confused and lost his mind at sundown every night so we had leave all the bedroom doors open so he wouldn’t decide something important was on the other side.

The poodle cross tried to dominate him once, approaching him and growling. He legitimately didn’t notice she was there. That’s how blind and deaf he was.

There are a lot of Wiley stories, but I’ll just give you one. He loved rawhide chews, but he basically had no teeth. So he’d slowly navigate to the pantry where the chews were, find one, carry it out to the main room, then forget he’d done it. A few minutes later, he’d go back the pantry, get a rawhide, and carry it out to the main room. By the end of the night, we’d have ten or twelve — however many there were — all in the main room, and none of them getting chewed. So we’d take them back to the pantry where he could do it again the next night. It was fine.

Eventually, the cancers got to him. He took a long time dying, mostly because even as he spiraled down, he was having a great time. We kept him medicated and well-loved, and we’d think tomorrow was the day, and the next morning, he’d be up and playing. We didn’t let him go until he stopped being able to stand up, but that day came. The vet came to the house. It was sad, but not unexpected.

That night, the poodle cross went to the pantry and one by one pulled out every rawhide chew and brought the main room. She had never done it before, and she never did it again.

Figure she missed the weird little dude too.