When I was seven years old, my aunt gave me a dog. It was a toy poodle, the runt of the litter. She was from their first litter. They didn’t originally want to give me the dog since she was the prettiest. But I took her home. My aunt said she was expecting me to give her back after a few months. I didn’t.

I still remember holding her in my arms for the entire four-hour car ride back home. She didn’t like me at first. As it turns out, she didn’t like children much at all. As we grew older together, however, we formed a bond. Because of how young I was, I accidentally named her Doggie. She recognized several names afterward, including Baby, which is what we ultimately stuck with on documents. But she first knew herself as Doggie.

She had her favorites in the family. I remember her going crazy whenever my dad would come home from work. She always sat next to my mom when she was eating and watching TV. She’d come to our rooms and ask us to put her in our bed. I remember once, while I was in the middle of a stressful study session, she barked at me outside of my door because I wasn’t paying attention to her.

She was a very smart dog. There are many instances of her ability to problem-solve or think things through. She had this cough, and she recognized that whenever she coughed, I would look at her. So after failing to get my attention for a while, she faked a cough to get me to look.

She was, through and through, a member of the family.

I remember when I was almost 15, I did the math. At the time, my dog was seven years old, and I figured she would die by her 10th year, as that’s what I was told was the norm. She didn’t, obviously, but a year later on my 16th birthday, she almost died.

I awoke to my dog crying under my bed. She wouldn’t come out, so I checked, and she was covered in blood. We immediately took her to the emergency vet. As it turns out, she was attacked by a coyote. She somehow survived. She broke several of her teeth off attempting to fight the coyote. Like I said, my dog is a toy poodle, you could put her in your lap and still have a lot of room left over. This tiny dog successfully fended off a coyote attack. She made a full recovery.

She was a constant in my life. By 2020, I figured she was in her last days. She started losing her sight, her hearing, and her sense of smell. She was still functional, but it was clear she was starting to decline. Year after year, I would think, “This is probably her last year.” And year after year, she proved me wrong.

She gained more chronic health issues starting in 2022. What always worried us were her mammary gland tumors. They were benign for the most part. But one of them ruptured last week. A sign of cancer, sure, but frankly they only gave us two solutions: surgery or euthanasia. With her age, the outlook for post-surgery recovery was not great, if she even survived the surgery. She always hated doctors. I remember her recovery from the coyote attack was long and brutal on her, and she was half the age she is now.

After 18 years, I put her down. I don’t feel guilt in the sense that it wasn’t her time. It was. If I didn’t do it now, she’d get worse. She might not understand the concept of death, but the pain was very real to her. So I put an end to the pain.

I’m devastated. I, of course, knew this day would come and have been mentally preparing for years. But it’s odd that she’s not here anymore. In a way, she hadn’t been here for a long time. Her behavior radically changed over the past year, she was a shell of her former self. But now she’s not physically here anymore. I can’t grab her anymore. I can’t hear her cry. I can’t wake her up.

We grew up together, and I saw her get old. I saw her survive the unthinkable, I saw her outlive every single member of her family, including the one child she had.

I brought her to our home holding her in my arms. And I said goodbye to her the same way.