When we first met Z at his foster’s house, he put his head in my then-boyfriend’s now-husband’s lap. It was a trap. 

Z was half chow chow, and was a stereotypical chow through and through. He was irascible. He was indifferent to other dogs at best and scarily rude to them at worst. If you touched him in a way he didn’t like (read: at all), he would go from zero to 100 in scary faces and barking. He was suspicious of strangers. He did not do “snuggling.” He was basically a mean cat. He was such a jerk. 

But he was our jerk. And god did it take time and work, but, for 10.5 years, we made it work. We worked out a very consent based petting regime: a nose boop meant yes, you may (must) pet my head now, thank you. With other dogs, we learned that what he really wanted was to do the dog equivalent of social media stalking (trailing a dog and smelling their pee/whatever they smelled) without really interacting with the dog directly.

He was the scarediest, bravest idiot I have ever met. He had an extraordinary sense of the uncanny. Halloweens were always fraught (but, also, hilarious). Blow up dolls/decorations waving in the wind; people moving in weird ways in their costumes; lights blinking and creepy soundboxes. Everything was a potential threat necessitating wide-eyed surveillance and 360 degree head swivels. Thunderstorms were a Big No Thank You, and he would happily abandon my husband and me to our fate as he continuously searched for the safest room in the house (I have very few good things to say about the aging process, but losing his lower frequency hearing may be the best thing that happened to him).  

He had terrible separation anxiety his entire life. We tried so hard to help him with it; trainers, training, micro-separations, you name it. But probably the best day of his life, without him realizing it, was when my husband’s work went fully remote right before the pandemic. He also had terrible arthritis that got worse and worse as he aged. When he started struggling with our fourth floor walk up apartment, we bought a fucking house outside our city, making sure to find one with at least one stair-less entryway. He did not express his gratitude.

He loved his people. He was always suspicious of anyone he met for the first time, but he remembered everyone. And if you went for a walk with him, you were IN. You may receive The Boop. He loved car rides. He knew that car rides = excellent peeing spots and social media stalking opportunities on the other end. He never quite figured out they could also mean the vet. 

He was thoroughly convinced that his job was guarding, and he was terrible at it. One night in our apartment we woke up to him barking out into the void on our balcony. I was convinced we were being home invaded. Nope, just two teens canoodling on the balcony next door.

In our house outside the city, a family of deer regularly visit/camp out in our backyard and made for excellent dog entertainment. Whether through luck or wit, the deer managed to find a few spots to sit in the yard where he couldn’t see them from inside, and always had big "siiiigh" energy whenever he went outside for a walk and started barking at them.

About a year and a half ago, we were told that Z only had a short time to live because of what was almost certainly a cancerous growth on his spleen. We opted for surgery, but with almost no hope that he had more than a month left at most. But, extraordinarily, the growth (apparently the size of a "small watermelon") was benign. The vet was as shocked as we were.

After that horrible, months-long experience, as far as I was concerned every day we had with him was a gift. My heart fucking breaks whenever I see the posts on here, or hear from friends, about taking their loved ones. I am so, so grateful that we had another 1.5 years with him. But it still wasn’t enough. I am greedy for more, and will feel robbed and cheated for the rest of my life. 

The last photo is Z at our wedding last summer. We did not think he was going to live to celebrate it with us. He didn’t bark a single time and even let the catering staff pet him. 

I love and miss you so much, Z.

P.S. For the nerds, we named him Zeno after the paradox (the one about an arrow never being able to get from point A to B because of the infinite number of half-distances between the points). Whenever we called his name, he'd only come halfway to us.

Zeno, the best, worst dog a human could ask for