Let Me Tell You About Charlie

Hiya friends,

This one isn’t about tech. The blog section is mine, and this week it belongs to Charlie.

In 2014, my husband and I were starting our life together in Orlando. A young married couple, a son who was a little over a year old, and very few plans.

My husband had just moved to the US permanently, and I was living under the fantasy that we’d be flying back to the UK two or three times a year. We didn’t really know what we were going to do with our lives. We just knew we wanted to be a family.

We made a friend group, and one of the moms had a cat she’d owned since college. She decided her very young kids should also have a dog, so she went on Craigslist, found a goldendoodle puppy, and brought him home.

The cat hated this plan.

It immediately got sick. Her vet said if a friend could keep the dog for a weekend, they could figure out whether the cat was actually ill or just old, pissed off, and depressed about the new addition to the family.

So she asked us. Could we keep her new dog, Charlie, for a long weekend? He was maybe four or five months old.

We were dog people, technically. My husband grew up with pets. I’d had a wonderful chocolate lab named Lola who stayed behind in my previous life. But we weren’t looking for a dog. Neither of us had great jobs. We didn’t even know if we were staying in Orlando.

The dog was cute and my friend needed the favor, so we said sure. We’ll keep him for the weekend.

Monday came and, in a cosmic blessing, the cat got better. Started eating again. Turns out the illness was that the cat hated Charlie. My friend called to let me know they’d probably be looking to rehome him.

What she didn’t know was what had happened at our house over the weekend.

My son Parks didn’t really start speaking until he was three and a half. Speech therapy three times a week, a parade of doctors, and one truly horrific Montessori educator had me almost convinced there was something deeply wrong with my child. This is the same boy whose IQ is through the roof, National Junior Honor Society and all. That saga is for another day.

That weekend, the boy who didn’t say mama said Charlie.

I decided right then that I didn’t know how, but Charlie was not going back. Charlie was our dog now.

We gave our friend a few hundred bucks for the kennel and registered him as Charlie James Griffiths. James, because 2014 was a fantastic year for Colombian soccer. James Rodríguez won the Golden Boot and left it all on the field.

And there we were. A family of four.

I have this thing about couples and pets. I don’t know if it’s because I didn’t grow up with pets myself, or because I got to love one dog for a very long time. But something about a couple getting a pet makes them a real family to me. Even after they have kids. I can’t explain it. I just know that’s what it felt like was happening to us.

Charlie was an amazing dog from day one. Patient. A gentle giant who eventually passed a hundred pounds. And in his youth, the kind of goofy menace that stressed me out constantly. Now I look at his white coat and think of those same memories fondly.

What an amazing, silly, loving dog we had.

I’ll tell you a quick story.

At the time I was working on Kindle digital support for Amazon. Let’s be one hundred percent honest: miserable job. But I needed the insurance and I needed to pay bills. My shifts ran six to six, starting at six in the morning.

My husband was working his own crappy job trying to make ends meet, sometimes opening the shop at four a.m. No family nearby, no babysitters, no money for daycare. So most mornings it was me, a headset, a toddler, and a giant adolescent dog.

A dog needs to go out. And Charlie was a runner. He loved to take off, and he was strong. I’d try to time his morning potty break with my work break, but some mornings the baby woke up at exactly the same moment, and my son got priority. Diaper, breakfast. Which meant Charlie got rushed.

Charlie did not like being rushed.

More times than I care to admit, he’d slip his collar and take off. If I had the baby with me, I would run after him. If I didn’t, I ran back inside, grabbed the baby, then ran after him. And more times than that, my break ended mid-chase because the Amazon overlords needed me back right away.

I was a mess.

I didn’t always catch him. One time I couldn’t chase him at all, and there were two lakes behind our house. He went straight for one. There were alligators in that lake.

Charlie did not care.

Twenty minutes later, a neighbor knocked on my door holding him, covered in swamp muck, looking like a swamp creature himself but happy as ever.

“This is your dog, right?”

I was so grateful and so apologetic. Charlie, you are absolutely killing me.

We had no business having this giant dog. But my God, was he funny. And we loved him so much.

Then came a better work opportunity, the one that ultimately changed my life, and it meant moving the whole family to San Francisco. Charlie included. Which made everything extremely expensive. I think I’m still paying for our housing from those years.

My husband drove out with Charlie while I flew with our sons. That road trip turned into their honeymoon. It was a running joke until not very long ago that Charlie got a longer honeymoon with my husband than I did. It sealed their bond for life.

I took Charlie to the GitHub office a couple of times. He was paralyzed by the shiny tile in the kitchen, so we accepted he wasn’t going to be an office dog. But he did remarkably well in San Francisco. He loved the road trip back home even more.

When we brought our youngest son home, Charlie became, once again, the gentle giant he’d always been.

One of my favorite memories is from a visit from my mother. My mom is a tiny person. Strong, but tiny. And I’d watch her walk Charlie, or Charlie walk her, and he just knew. He always knew when he needed to be gentle.

When I was diagnosed with cancer, Charlie never left my side. I believe animals know. On treatment days, after I came home, he wouldn’t move from the side of the couch. I’m convinced he was a little less crazy during that season, a little less of a runaway.

Because he knew.

He’s been the best boy. A protector. One of us.

A couple of years ago, after my friend Tracy lost her dog, we started talking about what it would mean for the boys when Charlie passed, and we decided a second dog might make it a little easier on them.

So we adopted Wilson.

It was absolute madness. Two peas in a dysfunctional pod, personalities that could not be more different. I’m sure this is not how Charlie wanted to spend his golden years. I’m also sure Wilson extended his life by at least a year or two.

The two of them made our family even more of a family.

Part of me kept hoping the decision would be made for us. That one morning Charlie just wouldn’t wake up. But Charlie is in pain. He barely moves anymore. His quality of life is gone, and I won’t wait until he’s suffering even more to send him off.

A devastatingly painful choice for us humans.

So he had all the yummy foods. A special meal. All the cuddles. We had a vet come to our home, and he went to sleep surrounded by the people he loved best, whose lives he made so much better for almost 13 years.

We are heartbroken. I’m trying to remember the good times. I like to think he’s swimming in a swamp, no pain, ribeye for dinner every night.

If you’re reading this today, it means our boy crossed over the rainbow. We got to hold him, cuddle him, and love on him until the very end. We are devastated but grateful for almost 13 years of the best “boi” ever.

What a gift to have a dog’s love.

And if some cosmic questioning brought you to this page, I leave you with the quote that helped us make the most difficult decision ever:

A week early is better than a day too late.

We love you, Charlie. You’ll always be one of us.