Goodbye Oscar

In Memory Of Oscar “Little Buddy” Damm

? — January 12, 2015

When people die, it’s hard. It’s upsetting and sparks anger, denial and deep sorrow. But it is a sadness and sorrow that typically, if death is in the natural variety, complete with some kind of closure. Goodbyes can be expressed and understood. Forgiveness can be asked for and granted, or even denied, and there is at least an understanding of how matters were left. Even sudden deaths can allow for inference of a goodbye that could bring peace to those left behind.

“That’s the way he would have wanted to go,” can be said because at some point during the deceased’s life, they actually said, “This is the way I would like to go.” And that brings with it a certain amount of comfort. It isn’t as easy with dogs, and Oscar, “Little Buddy,” Damm was a very good dog.

Oscar came to us through petfinder.com as a rescue. After proactively completing our dachshund rescue paperwork, we had a fast track to adoption of a dog. We simply had to find one that got along with Gracie, the other dachshund that lived in our home.

Oscar seemed to appear out of a fluffy pink bath towel being held by someone at a veterinary clinic. His neck was extended out and up toward the camera as if he wanted to reach his nose through the screen to greet me. His eyes were big, brown and bright, with a touch of desperation but a very eager sense of kindness. The look on his little wiener dog face just called to me. And it looked like he had gone through some rough times but he was determined to make the best of his vet office surroundings.

“I think I found him, honey,” I said as I hit the send button on an email to Wendy with the link.

“Oh, my gosh!” Wendy said out loud from her office twenty-five miles away. “Oh, he is very handsome.”

He was handsome. The notes said he had a bald patch on his back from stress, that he had been adopted and given up by two couples in only his first year of life, who didn’t understand what commitment to a dog means, and that he was unbelievably sweet. They undersold the sweet part.

That night, Wendy and I took Gracie to meet Oscar at his foster home, to make sure the dogs would get along. The foster mom was hosting several dogs of various shapes and sizes, but made sure Oscar could come out to meet us alone. The other dogs were intimidating to Oscar’s small frame, and he was just a little reluctant as he took the first steps out into the open of the foster family’s living room. He raised his head and looked right at Wendy across the room. He immediately began to run to her with purpose. Wendy braced for it by kneeling down with her arms open. He didn’t slow down as he approached, to sniff for danger or to show submission. He flat out leaped into the air, like a poorly catapulted russet potato directly into Wendy’s waiting embrace. I could see his little dachshund arms out as wide as they could go (not terribly wide), hugging my wife as he laid his comforted head on her shoulder. It was a beautiful moment and a memory I use to remind myself what love really is.

I immediately looked at the dog foster mom and said, “well, it looks like he’s coming home with us.” There really was never a question. It was March 20th, 2003.

Gracie, our picky little princess dachshund even liked him, and sat with him for the ride home. Home. He was home forever now. He knew it too. Although never having been to our house in Kent, he walked around the place like he had lived there for six months. He went outside to pee, came back in, and because it was nearing our bedtime, he walked directly over to our closed bedroom door and turned to look at us as if to say, “well, I don’t know about you people, but I have had a long day, what do you say we all go up and get in your bed?” And just like that, we let a dog we had only known for a couple hours, sleep deep down in the covers of our bed, where he always preferred.

We decided to keep his name the same. Although every second male wiener dog is named Oscar-get it? Wiener, Oscar, as in Oscar Meyer the makers of hot dogs that are often called wieners? Not funny. But since yelling that name had a better chance of keeping Oscar out of a busy street, we kept it.

The only time we were ever reminded that Oscar didn’t always live with us was when he heard a doorbell. We did not have one, so when a doorbell sound effect would go off on television, Oscar would begin to bark and race to the door, while Grace just thought he was nuts. That Pavlovian reaction always made me wonder which of the two previous houses had him jumping for the doorbell, and it was always a little sad. But if it bothered him, we sure couldn’t tell. But we sure did give him lots of attention when it happened, which of course only reinforced the behavior.

He was not as fast as Gracie, nor was he from a well bred line of papered dachshunds, and Gracie reminded Oscar of that constantly. Next to Gracie, Oscar didn’t quite seem as smart either. Oscar was always a bit slower, but to be fair, in contrast, I’m pretty sure Gracie reads at the third grade level. But what he lacked in speed of foot and brain, he over-compensated with cornering ability and absolute kindness.

Everyone loved Oscar immediately. He won your heart with his big eyes and ever-present smile, but would approach you humbly with his tail tucked between his legs. Everyone just had to hold him, and when they would pick him up, discover that the fur on his chest was as soft as the finest rabbit mixed with cashmere. When he was done on your lap, he would simply lick your hand lightly to let you know he was ready to go. Oscar could work a room like a veteran politician, and at the end of the party, everyone was voting for him.

Children especially loved Oscar and Oscar especially loved children. While Gracie would prefer little hands stay away from her, Oscar would endure grabbing and pulling with patience and affection. He also appreciated how easily they would give him food.

Oscar was a genius when it came to acquiring forbidden food. He could sniff out treats, or extra food you might have on a discarded plate, and if he could make it happen, he would have it. And he could almost always “make it happen.” On more than one occasion we caught Oscar on top of our dining room table.

Keep in mind that in his absolute prime, Oscar was only maybe six inches tall at the shoulder. And to get on the dining room table, he would need to execute an eighteen inch jump to get to the seat of a dining chair and then immediately jump another twelve inches to make the table. That’s three times his height for the first jump and then twice his height for the second. No human can do that, yet this fat little dog did it again and again. Maybe his little tail would helicopter him up there. I never saw it happen; I just found him in impossible places. I can’t help but imagining him in slow motion making these jumps with the sound effect from the Bionic Man. And that might not be the impressive part.

Once up there, this 11 pound dog would siphon up as much food as he could. While clearing the dinner table, we might come around the corner and see him daintily licking off the plates, but he would always position his body so he could see any impending threats to his gorging. As soon as he would detect one of us coming to take him off the table, he would increase his food intake ten fold. It was like he shifted from second through fifth gear in less than a second. I was always a little concerned when he did this, that he would accidentally swallow a serving spoon or gravy boat, but thankfully that never happened.

One time he managed to down an entire bowl of green beans and most of a cube of butter. That made for a long night. It was extremely gross but most impressive.

One afternoon, I came home from a trip to Safeway with several shopping bags full of groceries. Upon entering the house, I heard someone calling me down to the basement for assistance. I put the groceries down on the floor to hurry down the stairs. I was not downstairs more than a minute before heading back upstairs to begin putting the groceries away.

Halfway up, I got the feeling that something wasn’t right. Gracie stood at the top of the stairs looking at me as if to say, “I told him not to, but he wouldn’t listen,” and “I have been standing here the whole time.”

A can of soup rolled by the open basement door as my head became level with the hardwood floor. That was a bad sign. I knew Oscar had found the groceries and had began looting it like the first hour of a zombie apocalypse. I was only gone a minute, less than, in fact. How much could he have gotten into?

I arrived at the groceries and briefly felt relief when I didn’t see Oscar’s swirly-haired butt bobbing around halfway into a plastic bag. Only one bag looked like it had tipped over, which was also a good sign, but where was Oscar.

The air vent around the corner kicked on and blew a small, empty plastic bag across the floor in front of me and it landed at my feet. “Oh no.”

The bag, had until present, held exactly one pound of deli-cut turkey breast lunch meat.

Oscar stumbled around the corner, unable to manage the ten percent weight gain he took on in under a minute. He looked like a poorly made football. He looked bleary-eyed and stoned. He looked up at me as if to ask for a little assistance as he made his way, remarkably under his own power, to the backyard to try to undo some of the damage he had just done. When I picked him up, I realized that he didn’t just look like a poorly made football, but he felt as tight one as well.

Oscar had eaten all of it. It was one of the most impressive things I have ever experienced. Anyone that can eat ten percent of their body weight in under a minute would be granted miracle status from the Vatican. Oscar did it.

Oscar loved people and attention, but not always together. He wasn’t a glory hound. When we entered Oscar and Gracie into the wiener dog races one weekend in Oregon, he showed us that he wasn’t afraid to let the spotlight hit Gracie instead of himself.

Gracie had already handily won the first heat that she was in, but when it came time for Oscar to nose up at the starting line, he clearly wasn’t having it. Wendy held him at the start and I was calling him at the other end. When Wendy let go of him at the start, the other wiener dogs bolted out front, while Oscar tucked his tail and made a wide U-turn, back through the crowd and the hell away from the yelling people. We found him in the parking lot, still angry at us for signing him up for such a thing.

He wasn’t all smiles and sweetness though. Even the best of us can get frustrated at times. It took quite a bit to make Oscar mad, but when it happened, he was very clear when expressing his feelings.

I first noticed how Oscar would communicate frustration one morning when Puff, a one-eyed toy poodle, was staying with us. I had let Puff, Gracie, and Oscar out the kitchen door of our house to relieve themselves in the spacious back yard lawn area. As I like to have my privacy when performing bodily elimination, I like to grant such to others in the house as well, being human or not, so I turned my attention inside to the kitchen. After a few minutes, Puff punched through the doggie door and ran through the kitchen to the rest of the house. Gracie came through next and gave me the old stink-eye for some reason—I assume it was her distaste for the poodle.

When Oscar came through the door, he didn’t walk by me. He just stood in front of the door, not moving, staring at me. It was odd behavior so I instinctively approached him. Something was different about him. He was standing perfectly still, yet almost vibrating. He looked me in the eye as I got closer and I could see that he was absolutely pissed off. It also became clear that he was pissed on.

That was when I noticed for the first time, how Oscar would communicate how he was displeased. He made sure I was looking at him and then he would very sharply exhale through his nose and mouth. It wasn’t a sneeze. It wasn’t a spasm. It was just a raw expression of not knowing what to do with anger.

From his tail to his ear, and on a wiener dog that can be quite a distance, there was a line of poodle urine. Oscar just stood there wondering what I was going to do about the situation—no, demanding to know what I would do about the situation. He gave me another exasperated snort. Prince has explained to us what it sounds like when doves cry, well this is exactly what it sounds like when wiener dogs swear.

The only time I ever saw Oscar angrier was when he wanted his rawhide chew strip and it was out of his reach. It was jammed between two pieces of furniture and just out of range of his short snout.

What escalated the situation was the fact that he knew I had the ability to solve his problem easily, but I was ignoring him. Instead, I was preoccupied with this new baby that we had and couldn’t spare literally four seconds to use my opposable thumb to drag the rawhide just three inches closer. He must have been absolutely infuriated. In fact, he found a way to show me exactly how he felt.

As I knelt next to our bed, diapering or tickling our infant son, I felt something warm falling onto my bare foot. It was surprising because it felt a bit wet at the same time. My first thought was that Oscar might be peeing on me. But that was all wrong. What was hitting my foot, this had a little weight.

Sure enough, I look down to see Oscar hunched over my bare foot, laying an impressive poop right over the top of my upper-arch and toes with pinpoint accuracy. On his face, the definition of malice, no trace of shame. His eyes locked onto mine and they didn’t waiver. As he pushed, I could hear his little voice in my head, over my stupefied disgust, “Do I have your attention now?” And just before I lost my cool, as I was about to open my mouth to explain to a wiener dog that, “NO, WE DO NOT POOP ON PEOPLE’S FEET!” Before I could say that, in the zen moment when he knew he had captured my horrified attention, he gave me a very hard snort of air out of his mouth and nose. Check and mate.

It was gross, but I immediately laughed. I realized how mad Oscar had to be to resort to that level of retaliation. He had actually used his “nuclear option.” It was the only time he ever expressed himself in that way, but obviously it was not forgotten.

When our son Zach was born, we wondered how the dynamic of the house would change. We didn’t exactly worry that the dogs wouldn’t take to Zachary right away, but you hear stories that dogs or cats become jealous of the loss of attention. It was very important to us that the dogs accepted Zach into our little pack. Otherwise, we knew we would have to make the hard choice. We would have to put Zach up for adoption, which we really didn’t want to do.

Luckily, when the hospital released Zach on his second day, we brought him home to two dogs who couldn’t wait to meet him. It might be a little strange for some people to present a plump newborn baby to their waiting carnivorous animals who have descended from wolves, but it was the right thing to do. They were both incredibly excited to meet Zachary and sniffed and licked him with delight.

“Gracie, we are about to score major floor scraps,” was probably what Oscar was thinking.

Oscar particularly took a shine to Zach. There is a special bond between child and dog that cannot be duplicated. Oscar and Zach started that bond early. Oscar loved Zach a little extra. Oscar would seek out Zach when Zach was a tiny baby to check on him or be near him. When we would let him, Oscar would curl up next to Zach as Zach napped away lazy afternoons back when we counted weeks and months for him instead of years.

When Zach started toddling around the house and dropping things from his high-chair. Oscar was often following behind, curious to see where Zach would go. Later, Oscar would wander into Zach’s room to make sure he was there at night or to make sure all the bedroom doors were open. Oscar is against the idea of closed doors inside a house.

Unfortunately, the sands of time run much faster for dogs than for people. They ran faster for Oscar than his little legs could keep up with. He wasn’t the healthiest dog. In fact, people always questioned his age and health even though he was very close in age to Gracie, who still gets around like a much younger dog.

He came to us with a large bald patch on the right side of his body. When we adopted him, the agency said that he had probably lost it due to stress and that the fur would probably grow back. The adoption wasn’t contingent on Oscar growing his fur back. We didn’t mind it. It certainly helped identifying him between the two smooth furred brown dachshunds that were all over our houses.

The patch never grew in, not even a little bit, and our vet had us run some dubious $200 tests to make sure it wasn’t serious. It wasn’t serious. As a matter of fact, when we moved and the new vet asked about his patch and we said we had it tested, they looked at me like I was incredibly stupid and said, “they ran tests on it? It’s pretty clear to me that it’s just a bald spot. I just wondered if it was getting bigger.”

The patch was shaped curiously like a map of Iraq if you held Oscar up correctly. This helped us explain where Wendy’s brother might be stationed while serving in the National Guard in that country. People would ask where Adam was in Iraq and if Oscar happened to be walking by, we would just reach down, orient the surprised but happy wiener dog to show the map and point to the part of his bald spot the represented where a certain Iraqi city might be; very handy.

Oscar always struggled with his weight, at first we just thought he was extremely motivated by food, which he was, but a few years ago we learned that he might have Cushings disease. Without going into the details, Cushings effects the pituitary gland, hormones and appetite. It’s not a cheap disease to have or fight, but if you have the manageable kind, it can be treated and add years to the lifespan.

After several very expensive tests and a specialist, it was determined that Oscar wouldn’t need surgery but would need to be on meds the rest of his life along with monitoring tests every few months. It was around the time Wendy was getting ready to move with Zach to Kansas and leave me back in Washington with the dogs to keep me company. I took Oscar to see the specialist a few times after Wendy had moved, and every time we would go to a vet appointment, Oscar got this sad, guilty feeling in his eyes. I never told him he wasn’t worth it. He was worth every dime, but I always got the feeling from him that he thought of himself as a burden. He wasn’t.

It turned out he also had a problem with his eye, that only dachshunds and like two other breeds tend to get. This required a canine optometrist. When I took him to that specialist, I fully expected to have Oscar walk out of the back wearing tiny horn-rimmed glasses, but no, just a bunch of eye drops to be administered with his morning pill and night pill.

By this point, he was racking up thousands of dollars in medical bills. I remember my mother, who loved Oscar as much as any of us, asked me about how much it was costing. I told her it was easily several thousand dollars by that point, with some expensive monthly maintenance medicine. Concerned, my mother asked if we had thought about some kind of limit we were thinking of putting on the dogs life.

“How much are you going to spend on him before you decide it’s too much,” my mother asked me.

I bristled, “you mean, what limit will we reach and decide he just has to die?”

“Well yeah,” she clarified, sensing I was about to answer offended, which was not Mom’s intent.

I guess it was the sense of impending mortality of losing Little Buddy that made me answer sharply, “that’s a good idea Mom. I never thought of putting some kind of limit on his life. When you get older, what kind of limit do you want us to put on YOUR head?”

Mom laughed, “well that’s a pretty good point.”

Cushings wasn’t all bad though. Oscar would happily vacuum up any popcorn or scraps of food that fell on the floor. If it was safe food and if he wasn’t already hovering under foot, I would just yell his name and he would run in to the kitchen like the fire brigade and get to work.

There was an unfortunate occurrence when he found a bag of candy bars at my parents house one time while we were out of town. When they found him, he had all but finished an entire bag of the “fun size” bars and his stomach was so full, it was putting pressure on his little, wiener dog lungs. His tongue was turning blue, when they got him to the emergency vet. I’m told he was more basketball than football that time, and when they finally got a hose down his throat, he deflated like a punctured balloon.

The last few years of Oscar’s life were very happy. We eventually moved the dogs to Kansas to be With Wendy and Zach full time. On the plane ride out, we were worried that Gracie would bark the whole time we were in the airplane cabin. The dogs stayed under the seats in little kennels, with the mesh doors facing us.

It wasn’t Gracie who gave us any trouble surprisingly. She was terrified and stayed quiet. But Oscar knew we had treats to keep them quiet. He took to barking soft once Wendy passed him a nugget of kibble through the wire. He would wait a little bit and then bark softly again. If Wendy ignored the first bark, he would wait a little longer and then bring the thunder. He would let out as loud of a bark as he could. He was rewarded instantly, simply because we couldn’t tell him “no” on the flight and he took advantage of that every day.

In Kansas, he met new people and smelled new scents. He became fascinated be the squirrels who lived in the big oak in our backyard. The squirrels loved to tease him by running to the base of the tree and pretending they didn’t know a dog lived in the house and was on the porch. When Oscar would see one, he would take off like a porky potato with tiny legs after it.

The squirrel would wait at the base of the tree until Oscar was six inches from catching him—still plenty far away from Oscar’s semi-dangerous jaws—and then the squirrel would casually shoot up the tree, leaving Oscar to his excitement of “almost” catching a squirrel.

He would turn and look at me with a big smile, “did you see that, Dad? I almost had him!”

I never had the heart to tell Oscar that the other two squirrels were always up in the tree, watching and laughing…or that the squirrels would usually circle Oscar once before going up the tree. Those squirrels were jerks.

When we moved back to Washington from Kansas, we almost lost Oscar. As the boxes were being packed and the house was being cleared of furniture, Oscar started to deteriorate. He was in an enormous amount of pain and wouldn’t move from his bed. When we picked him up to take him outside to relieve himself, he would yelp and howl with pain. He was wobbly, and couldn’t stand on his own. And Oscar, our forever hungry little dog, wouldn’t eat his dinner.

We would move him gently from room to room with us as we cleared and cleaned the rental house just before our road trip. It was December when we left Kansas with two cars loaded like the kinds of busses you see crossing the African deserts packed to double capacity. With the stress of the moving time-crunch over, with three days on the long road across the Midwest, we settled into our thinking chairs to really let Oscar’s condition sink in.

Bumps in the road or shifts in inertia could set off a string of distressed yelps that could not be cured with a gentle hand or medicine. He just laid there, uncomfortable and suffering.

On one evening in Wyoming, Oscar perked up a little. He ate some of his food. But I still had to hold him up as he pooped and peed outside the hotel at a toasty 16 degrees.

When we got to Washington and took him to a vet to get him fixed up, the vet knew right away what the problem was. It wasn’t his Cushings. It wasn’t his spine or his liver. His neck muscles were simply all knotted up in a big, painful ball of stress.

It turns out, watching us pack up our house was too much for him to handle. I imagine that Oscar was experiencing some old, unresolved feelings attached to the two times he was abandoned as a puppy.

It was just a simple muscle relaxer that made him better, but it was his heart that had been wounded. Oscar loved deeply, almost to a fault. He had created bonds with the first two families again that reached over ten years into his life with us. I imagine the boxes he saw us packing were similar to the ones being packed when the decision was made to give Oscar up. One Family breaking up and moving away and another family that moved into a place that didn’t allow pets.

The thought of losing us, or anyone was so terrible to that sweet little dog, that his little body started to turn on him. It reminded us all of just how full of love he was and how deeply cared about being a member of our family.

The next year was our bonus year with Oscar. We spent extra time with him, took him on hiking and biking adventures, and gave him lots of extra love.

He was completely deaf at this point, but he would still chase a ball and bring things for you to throw for him. He was slower, but always so happy to see you after a long day. He would run his portly little body over to any opened door to meet new friends from the neighborhood who got to know him and care for him.

We had been told long ago that ultimately it would be his liver that would fail and then he would quickly pass away. On the morning Oscar died, he was having trouble walking and making sense of where he was, he had been that way for the last 24 hours. So I set an appointment with the vet and took him in so they could fix him up.

But quickly, the doctors took him in to the examination room, letting me know that he would probably need x-rays and other expensive procedures, which I expected and was happy to pay. But then the doctor returned to the room and said she wanted to cancel the procedures. She said it looked to her as if his liver was failing and that he was very ready to pass.

I wasn’t prepared.

He’d been at death’s door many times, but this is the first time a vet had told me they would cancel x-rays. That machine just prints money for a vet. Veterinarians love to take x-rays. The idea that one would cancel them was ominous.

The doctor assured me with a finality that I knew to be serious. She asked if I could call anyone down to be with him. I couldn’t. Wendy didn’t have a car and Zach was at school across town.

“Can I take him with me?” I choked out of my constricted throat, “I have to get my family, they have to say goodbye too.”

“Absolutely,” the doctor said empathetically as she motioned an assistant to bring Oscar to me. “But you have to know that it is very possible that he will pass on the way.”
This hit me like a blow to the stomach. It was all happening so fast. I had planned on Oscar getting some tests done, tweaking his meds and bringing him home to sleep by the fire with Gracie. Now I was being told that today was going to be his last day.

They brought my Little Buddy into the room wrapped in a wooly brown blanket, very much like the fluffy pink towel I first saw him in that first adoption photo. His eyes were open but now I could see it. Now I could see him holding on.

Although the doctor said Oscar wasn’t in pain, she said that he wasn’t comfortable and would have a rough existence until he passed. The plan was to take him to see the family and we would bring Oscar back to euthanize him.

I asked if I could take him out the back door because I was a mess and the last thing a waiting room full of worried pet owners needs to see is a grown man weeping freely while cradling his motionless dog.

I was a mess, trying to get ahold of Wendy. I called my mother, who immediately understood but was very emotional too. She kept me from crashing the car as I drove to pick up my family with Oscar right next to me.

I talked to Oscar as I juggled communication with Wendy, letting her know how serious the situation was. I felt his heart beating faster through his oh-so-soft chest fur. His nose was dry. His breathing was labored.

Wendy came down from her office and picked up Oscar in his blanket and bed and held him close as she spoke loving words to him that he was too deaf to hear. We both cried and headed to Zach’s school to give him the opportunity to say goodbye to one of his first friends.

I kept it together when I opened his classroom door, knowing if I said anything, I would lose it. I simply caught his teacher’s attention and mouthed the words, “I need to take Zach.”

“Dad, what’s wrong?” he asked me in the hall as I gathered all his things.

“Buddy,” I began.

“Is Oscar dead?” Zach asked. He knew Oscar wasn’t well and that I was to take him to the vet that day. But I could honestly tell him that Oscar wasn’t dead.

“He’s in pretty bad shape, Zach,” I said, unable to hold back a stream of tears, “we have to say goodbye to him today.”

That’s what we did. On the way to the vet, we stroked him and loved him as much as we could.

The clinic was amazing. They gave us assurances that it was the end for Oscar and they gave us plenty of time with him. The doctor answered Zach’s questions so sweetly, I was thankful that she could say what I could not at the time.

She explained to us how our pets are more than just creatures that occupy space in your home. They are often more loyal than any human could be. Because of this, a dog like Oscar might fight on and live a miserable existence just because they want to please us. They won’t give up until we give them permission to go.

“It’s okay Oscar, you can go,” Zach told him gently as he cried some of his first grieving tears. I was proud of him. Wendy and I followed suit, with our words, yes, but also releasing him with our hearts so that he could feel free to pass.

Oscars eyes opened with a little more coherence, and like he had always done while sitting in our laps, he licked our hands gently, letting us know that he was ready to move on.

The doctor administered the drugs and the light in Oscar’s eyes dimmed into open nothingness.

…
We had Oscar cremated and he is back home with us. The last two weeks have had more tears than I can count. Reminders of Oscar are everywhere, his harness, sweater, leash, bowl and a stain here or there.

Gracie is getting along without Oscar, but I feel very guilty that she didn’t get to say goodbye. I don’t think she really understands what has happened. All she knows is that Oscar threw up on the carpet three times and I took him someplace he didn’t come back from. Although there hasn’t been an accident in the house since, I am hesitant to believe it’s because Gracie thinks we just got rid of Oscar because of one too many accidents.

There is a massive hole in our home, lives and hearts left by a tiny brown dog. It’s quieter in the house without his weird, deaf barking or his chronically uneven gate when walking or trotting down the hall. But nowhere is it quieter than in my head.

I always felt that I could “hear” Oscars thoughts. He had a voice and a simplicity all his own. I heard it when I was with him. It was a kind, naive voice, always a little dopey, almost always food centric, but it was in my head, as clear as a bell whenever I was with him.

Since he passed, I can’t hear his voice in my head, and that has made whatever else was going on in my head terribly lonely.

I would love to think that Oscar was greeted in heaven by my grandmother, who loved Oscar dearly and held him whenever she could. That makes me feel better.

But I really wish he was with all the amazing dogs that have touched our lives through the years and moved on: Lady, Sarah, Chopper 2, Puff, Scotty, Angel, Heather, Shaugnesy, PJ, Suzy, and maybe Ms. Wolverine. Ms. Wolverine was a fish, but I don’t know all the rules of pet heaven.

None of us that knew him will ever forget Oscar. But the best part of sharing his life was watching the lessons he showed us of kindness, simple pleasures, unconditional love, and dying and letting go.

Goodbye Little Buddy.