Goodbye, Clyde

When Pearl and I would go on vacation, we’d drop off the dogs at a sitter’s house we found on the Rover app, on which we found two wonderful people named Randy and Cindy. We never had to worry about our pups – Ulysses S. Dog is as resilient as they come, and he loved hanging around the other dogs at their house. Clyde T. Dog, on the other hand, always made us worry a bit. He didn’t often want anything to do with staying there at first, but once he was in their house, he found his buddy Randy sitting in his recliner, and Clyde jumped up and laid down in the chair next to him, as if to say, “Welp, you’re my person for the next few days.” During one stay, late at night, Clyde was let out of his kennel to go to the bathroom outside, only he snuck upstairs (where no dogs are allowed) and made himself comfortable in Cindy’s chair in her bedroom. Cindy didn’t have the heart to put him back downstairs in his kennel so she went back to sleep with him. Another successful Clyde scheme came to fruition. He had his person.

There aren’t many wild or rollicking stories to tell about Clyde. He wasn’t that kind of dog. He was the kind of pup who wanted to just sit by you, get an occasional pet, get his walks and his food, and he was fine. He just needed his person, his people, by his side.

Clyde T. Dog passed away on Wednesday, May 14, 2025 at 10:15-ish AM. He had recently been diagnosed with a grade 5 (out of 6) heart arrhythmia, a condition I'm reasonably sure he was born with that only got worse with age. Besides, he had so many other oddball maladies -- his short little legs, his extra claw on his back right leg, the fold in his left ear that never made sense, and his famous butt-nose. In his advanced age, Clyde began to develop heart disease, something the arrhythmia medication certainly didn’t help with. But he made it to 15 years and 8 months. He was my dog, our dog, for nearly 13 of those years.

The past week, I’ve had many, many people reach out to offer their condolences. It’s in the hundreds. Thank you to everyone who’s taking the time to read this, and thank you if you’re one of the folks who reached out. It turns out Clyde had more than just me and Pearl and Randy and Cindy and friends and family as his people, he had a LOT of people, from all over. He had a charmed life.

But, when all the condolences fade, and it’s just you and what you’d normally be doing, then the grieving really starts. And it hurts like hell. The kind of pain where you feel your chest caving into a bottomless pit that leads through your stomach, and you have to remind yourself to breathe. That feeling only intensifies as days go by, because it’s one day further away from my friend.

I feel desperate to remember him. There's a part of me that wants to scream into the void, demanding that the universe bring him back to me. But that feeling has a short shelf life. I know that's not going to happen. If anything, I’m finding it difficult to be mad about something being taken away when it was only given to me in the first place.

More than any other feeling, I feel lucky and thankful. One reason is because the end came quickly – it wasn’t a long drawn out process, there wasn’t a lot of pain and suffering, and he passed with me right next to him on his favorite bed. He didn’t have to be put down, so there wasn’t any kind of decision to be made. I’m very thankful for that since I know that’s not always the case in those circumstances.

But what I’m most thankful for is that I don’t have any regrets at all, about anything. And I can say that with total confidence because I know in my heart I did absolutely everything I could, day in and day out, to take care of that dog. I’m thankful that I have something in my life to point to, where I can say, “That’s the best thing I ever did.” Taking care of Clyde is what I’m most proud of in my life. I put in the work, and it paid off. I’ll be able to say that for the rest of my life. And that’s the reason why I’ll never forget him.

There is one other Clyde story I like to tell – around Halloween, we had a bowl of candy out on an end table in our living room. It was filled with a bunch of caramels, individually wrapped in plastic. To my surprise, they were disappearing fast, to the point that I thought, “Wow Pearl is really putting away those caramels.” After stupidly broaching the subject with her, I was met with a scathing glare that told me she in fact was NOT putting away those caramels. Instead, Clyde was sneaking away with them, one at a time. But he wasn’t eating them. He didn’t know how to open up the plastic. Chewing on them must have failed. So instead, he hid caramels all around the house – couch cushions, bed sheets, blankets, everywhere. When we weren’t paying attention, he’d sneak off, dig into the couch to pull out his preferred caramel, and sit there and lick it. The final count was something like 8 or 9 hidden caramels.

But yeah, there aren’t many other weird wacky stories to share. Yeah he was a bit of a weirdo, he was neurotic, and he was as entitled as a dog can possibly be, but he held me accountable, during a time when nothing and no one else could hold me accountable, including myself. He was worth it. Goodbye, Clyde Dog. I’ll miss you, buddy.