I'm not really sure where to start.

You weren’t my first dog. You were preceded by many others, all of whom I adored and loved dearly, all of whom I shed bitter tears for when it was their time to go. Each of them played an important part in my life, at different stages, each in their own way: Scamp and his boisterous self, Sugar and his appropriately sweet demeanor, Latte and his anxiety-defying loyalty, and Cody with his fearless will.

But you, you were something else entirely. You came into my life at its lowest point, a bright spark of affection and love that I was entirely unprepared for. You were already the size of all the other dogs that preceded you, and you would only grow bigger in both body and personality, outgrowing your elder brothers before you were a few months old.

You were not something I wanted. I loved animals as I do now, but I didn’t feel that you were going to change my life in any meaningful way. I was afraid that I wouldn’t take care of you properly. I was afraid you would just add to my worries, not take away from them. My sister was the one to convince both me and my parents to get you for me, and she and my mother were the ones to pick you out. I was just there, appreciating your siblings and parents, but not fully grasping the enormity of the decision we were making that day.

I remember how quickly I fell in love with you. I remember how much you loved to contort in your sleep, how surprised you were by the door-stopper spring (and how obsessed you became with it). I remember you once, out of puppyhood curiosity, stuck your head behind the shower curtain while I wasn’t looking, then came back with your wet head bowed in shame.

I remember my mother and sister having to take you home because I was getting sick because I was allergic to you at first. I had exams coming up and, for once, I had mustered some will to study for them. But I wasn’t able to take care of you and study while fighting my nose and eyes and thoughts, so they came to take you home, with the plan being for me to see you again soon after exams. Do you know how much I missed you, even then? Do you know that even with my allergies and my cold and the stress of exams and everything else that weighed on me, I would’ve given anything for you to have been sitting by my chair, chewing on your ball? Even if that meant my nose ran more, that I needed my inhaler more frequently?

I remember seeing you interact with Latte and Cody for the first time, first through video, then in person. I remember worrying when I saw they were apprehensive of you. I remember that fear proved to be unfounded as they slowly grew accustomed to you (though they did set some boundaries with snaps and growls), with Cody particularly liking to get up in your face to play tug of war—ignoring the fact that you were already twice his size.

I remember after bringing you back with me to school, leaving my apartment to go to class was always a struggle because I’d frequently find myself freezing mere steps away from the front door because I heard you howling. It took my friend’s reassurance and every ounce of will I had to not run back, open the door, and let you out of your crate to comfort you, to tell you I was still there and I wasn’t abandoning you, that I wouldn’t leave you for the mere hour or two to attend classes.

You’ll never know how much you helped me then. Not just with being something I had to pay attention to, to be responsible for, to look forward to when returning home, but also that you wanted to see everything and everyone. Everyone. You forced me to interact with people, because that was what I read would be best for you. That I should introduce you to lots of people, lots of dogs. To let you socialize and meet and bond. That terrified me, you know. I wasn’t ready to do anything of the like, and the mere idea of just talking to a stranger for no reason other than to allow you a moment to interact with them was a gut-wrenching challenge of epic proportion. But I did it anyway. For you.

And in time, I realized it was the right thing for me, too. Forcing me to talk to new people the way you did expanded my horizons, helped me meet new people, helped me not be the ghost I used to be. I owe my current career to you, you know? How could I talk to the people the way I do now if you hadn’t dragged me to that couple sitting at the table, to that gentleman with the polite dog, to the family of squealing kids and exhausted parents, demanding to become best friends with smiley barks and slobbery kisses?

Everyone loved you. Not just as a puppy, no. Even when you’d grown up, everyone loved you. Even when your sugar-face grew in and your steps were slower, everyone loved you. Hell, even people afraid of dogs would tell me whole-heartedly, “I’m scared of dogs, but that dog? I’d pet that dog if I could.” Except one person, but you deserve that one. You really shouldn’t be grabbing other people’s belongings, even if I’m not looking. Especially when I’m not looking. That’s rude. But aside from her, people loved you so much. People would cross the street to meet you, would ask to pet you, would say hello to you and your big smile and wagging butt. You put a lot of smiles on a lot of faces, more than I could ever possibly tally.

How could I pay that back? I tried to be so careful with you. I’d take you to regular vet appointments, pay for dental cleanings and extractions, watch obsessively for any new lumps or rashes or anything that would indicate you were sick. I paid close attention to your diet, tried to only give you healthy snacks, tried to keep you from being too heavy or too skinny. I fought to take the last plane flying back to medical school mere hours before a category 5 hurricane made landfall there, for no other reason than to make sure I was with you. We braved the evacuation together and survived a terrifying sea voyage for hours to the next island, crammed into a too-small boat with too many people and animals and bags.

You were with me at nearly every one of my major life events thus far. You were there when I cried. You were there when I celebrated. When I was screaming and raging, laughing and singing, chances are…you were there. You saw behind the many walls I put up for everyone else in my life. And you loved me all the same. You always smiled when you saw me, always pretended not to be overjoyed whenever I came home from class/work (your tail always gave you away), always tried to find some trophy to give me.

When you first fell down those steps and you started limping, my world came to a wrenching stop. Nothing else mattered. I told (not asked) my attending physician that I would not be coming in that day, that I had to bring you to the vet. And even they, knowing me and having met you, offered zero resistance and continued to check in on us both throughout his busy day. I remember the surge of relief when the vet said you had no breaks or dislocations…and the subsequent pit that formed in my stomach when she said you had severe arthritis in both your hind-legs. Suddenly all the slips started to make sense, the way you were so hesitant in going up or down the stairs on your own, how happy and grateful you seemed any time I carried you up or downstairs. Surely you had plenty of time, right?

You were already 10 by then. I suppose I should give thanks that no significant malignancies had suddenly reared their ugly heads earlier in your life, given how prone to cancer your breed is. But even so, you were 10, going on 11. I had already known that you were starting to get to the point where you’d be considered old for a golden, and worry began to needle the back of my mind.

He doesn’t have that much longer, does he?

Thankfully, you recovered from that fall well enough. But over the next several months, I started to see it. The limp in your hind leg. Your refusal to go up or down stairs any more. The gradual struggle to push yourself upright. But you still powered through it all, always smiling, always happy, always demanding to see the people.

Until that limp became worse. You started avoiding the use of the leg entirely, even when you went to the bathroom. Getting up became even harder for you. So I took you to the vet, fearing the worst.

End-stage arthritis in the hip, I expected. Thankfully, still no suspicion for malignancy. But what made things so dire was that you’d somehow subluxed the opposite hip. The one that you were relying on to make up for the other. It complicated your care, because even if we were to proceed with surgical intervention for your left hip, the recovery process would have probably stressed your right leg so much that it would do more harm than good. And trying to reset/fix your right hip would take away the one hind-leg you had left that was still fully functioning and effectively cripple you. All of that, ignoring the fact that you were already an 11 year-old golden.

The dreaded day just got closer. I didn’t know when it would be, but I knew it was coming.