Calvin. The first time I met you, you were a squirmy, soft, impossibly tiny 4-pound baby. Your giant dark brown eyes, rimmed all around in black, looked deeply into mine, and I felt immediately that I must have loved you forever. That wide-eyed puppy dog stare was your secret weapon every day of your life. I remember the first time you came and sat beside me at my desk, staring intently into my eyes. “What, Calvin? What do you want?” I asked. You leapt with excitement when your “big doe-eyed” stare worked. You trotted directly to the closet where I kept your food and treats. Food was your greatest love, and you knew just how to get it. Begging was a game of endurance to you. The moment I’d get up and start walking toward the closet was your big victory, as though to say, “I finally got her!”
My dad called your technique “the stare-down,” and you always won in the end. Even if I’d already given you four treats, eventually I’d always cave. And you knew it too. You had such a strong will that I’ve always admired deeply. That massive appetite and that steely determination were why I often called you “my strong, sturdy boy.” So beautiful, so broad-shouldered, and so stubbornly independent.
I remember when you were a puppy, Chris and I took you to obedience school at the local Petco. When it was time to practice walking on a leash, we practically had to drag you down the aisle. You noticed a nice soft dog bed placed on the lowest shelf and you climbed in, curled up, and closed your eyes. And that was the end of practicing walking. From that day on, no walk was ever simple with you. When we wanted to go left, you always went right. If you were displeased with our direction, you’d simply plop down on the ground and refuse to move.
One time, the night before a family vacation, you went out one last time before bed. Chris called you to come in and, true to character, you bolted in the opposite direction. Straight into a skunk who sprayed you right in the face. So there Chris was, scrubbing you in the bathtub (which you hated) at 11 p.m. the night before our early morning flight.
I used to tell Chris that you were definitely a cat in your last life. For so many reasons. You hated water so much, you practically never had a bath. Yet you always smelled like the sweetest sugar behind your ears. You’d walk in from a soggy day with that “wormy outdoor smell,” as I’d call it, curl up, and drift to sleep. Soon enough, your sweet “sugar musk” scent would return. Your sugar musk was one of my favorite things about you. I was sure you brought it from heaven. And your “white socks” always remained pristine. I remember the time we took you for a walk and a lady approached us asking, “how do you keep his paws so white?” Chris and I laughed and said that was just the way you were born. You were so beautiful and you knew it, with your white blaze and big brown ears that would flap in the wind when we took you to the beach. You were a bit of a snob too, just like a cat. Never once did you come to greet us when we’d walk in the door. Even when we’d been gone for hours. I thought the greeting at the door was the duty of all dogs, but you’d simply look up from your comfy pillow on the couch and yawn and stretch and consider getting up.
When Chris and I first brought you home, we thought you’d sleep in a crate at night as the housetraining books instructed. How wrong we were! You cried and wailed in that crate and we felt terrible, so you started sleeping on blankets on the floor. As you got a bit older and stronger, you started following us up the stairs to our bedroom at night. For every day of your life, you loved to burrow under blankets and pillows. You loved so much to be pampered and ultra cozy. Soon enough, you were tucking yourself under the blanket at the foot of our bed, gently snoring. And so you had us fully trained!
You’d bring those soft, soothing snores to my office too. You’d settle on your dog bed or my meditation mat, and within minutes, you’d drift off. And all the pressing thoughts in my mind would quiet along with you. One of my favorite parts of the day was when I’d hear the familiar tap-tap of your paws walking down the hallway toward my office. I’d always get out of my chair and plop down on the floor beside you. You’d press so close beside me and take a nice long chest and neck rub, your favorite. And I got to kiss your sugar musk ears, which I often told you felt like “warm silky velvet.” You really were impossibly soft. I felt you were as happy in those moments as I was.
I don’t remember quite when this started, but at bedtime, you started to expect Chris to carry you upstairs and set you on your bed with pillows, and tuck you under your blanket. You’d just stand at the foot of the stairs and look at us like, “take me to my sleeping quarters now.” I called this your “royal turn-down service.” You always looked so adorable peeking at me with your giant eyes, propped in Chris’s arms as you were carried like a stuffed animal up the stairs, so I called you my “Teddy Bear.”
I also called you Coodle because you so loved your cuddles. In the early morning, I’d often walk into the living room to find Trevor wrapped up in a blanket and you curled right beside him. When I’d lie on the couch to watch TV or read, you’d take a running leap up onto the couch and settle down, pressed up closely against me. Within a minute, you were softly snoring, your chest gently rising and falling, your silky soft fur so warm against me. When I was pregnant, I often felt so tired and sick, I’d lie on the couch. You would always hop right up beside me, comforting me, my constant companion.
I had a hundred names for you. Cal-Cal, Caldy, Cal-Bean, Beans, Teddy Bear, Sugar Musk, Coodle, and Coodleton the Beagleton of the House. But ultimately, you were my teacher. Your stubborn will taught me so much about how to listen to my inner calling despite what anyone around me may say or think. You loved unconditionally too. Trevor, as a baby, delighted in pulling your tail and often accidentally stepped on you. You’d forgive immediately. I’d find you curled up beside him minutes later. You didn’t care what the agenda was or where you’d end up, when we said, “Calvin, go for a ride?” you went bounding down the stairs to the garage. Even when I went into the bathroom, I’d hear a sudden thump at the door that would make me jump three feet into the air. It was you, pushing the door open with your paw so you could curl up on the bathmat and join me. You didn’t care where we were. Your presence in my life answered the question, “what is life like without shame, without grudges or blame, without storylines of who did what, without judgments of any kind?” I got to live that kind of freedom with you.
On one of your final days, you sat on the grass for a long while, just letting the breeze carry scents straight to your twitching nose. I sat up close behind you, rubbing your chest in the way you loved, stealing kisses on your sugar musk, silky velvet ears. I don’t know if either of us could have been happier. The world says we need riches and fame and status to be successful, but that’s all lies. All I’ve ever really needed are moments of connection and feeling deeply seen, with nothing hidden and nothing to prove. You gave me that.
One of your final lessons, I think, was how to accept aging with grace. Nothing in this world is untouched by decay, but thank you for showing me how to face the inevitable with strength and dignity. What I admired most in you was that you never carried a sense that life had wronged you. Even at the end, through all the pain, you never became a victim of it.
I know how you must have missed the boundless energy you had as a younger dog. You were such a fireball. You would get the ultimate zoomies, literally bouncing off walls and doing flying leaps through the air. One of your favorite games was to grab my hair scrunchie with your teeth, and ever so gently (you really were careful not to pull my hair!), take off running for me to chase you. You brought the same enthusiasm to digging through Chris’s duffle bag to find his hockey tape to chew on. And you’d rip your stuffies to shreds, then proudly bring us the plastic squeaky inside as though you’d found the prize (it really was a prize for you too, because we had to give you treats to coax you to drop the plastic!).
How you loved to chase Trevor around the house to get Greenies (one of your all-time favorite treats) from him! You adored all food though. Absolutely everything but raw veggies and pretzels. I called you my “Vacuum Cleaner” because you’d sniff out every crumb on the floor and gobble it up. I often said you “earned your keep” in two ways: your adorable face and your dedication to keeping our floor crumb-free. And I’d always say you “hit cuteness overload” when you’d settle on the rug, your back legs stretched out in your signature frog pose, chomping away on your toy bones that I spread with peanut butter or cream cheese.
Things changed by your final year. Cuddle sessions on the couch dwindled away because your arthritis made it too much to jump. I started to notice your presence less and less in my office, since that was upstairs. More and more, you needed me to carry you up and down the stairs, my aching and weary Teddy Bear. Where I once cringed when I’d hear a doorbell on TV (it would send you storming to the front door, barking up a storm), I now needed to gently wake you from deep sleep to let you know the dog walker had arrived. Recently, I started to realize I’d finished entire meals without your puppy dog stare-down. As a younger beagle, one faint rustle of a pretzel bag was enough to send you careening into the kitchen. Mealtimes were always tension-filled because, no matter how many bites we gave you from our plates, you’d let out the most pitiful soul-deep wails that seemed to say, “I’m starving over here!” At the end, though, you were sleeping too deeply to show up at the table at all. And so I was introduced to the hollow silence of mealtimes without Cal-Bean pawing at my lap.
Calvin, I don’t think the dark empty ache goes away. You were a once-in-a-lifetime Bright Light with a heart that would, when you lay beside me, beat with mine. But I do carry with me the knowing that once there lived a comical, fiercely stubborn, unbelievably adorable beagle named Calvin. And for a fleeting moment in time, I got to know him and to love him.
