The best boy

He was the smallest fluffball in the tiniest cage at Memphis Animal Services. Separated from the rest of his litter and curled into a small brown ball, there wasn’t anything terribly distinguishing about him. The worker helping us said he’d definitely be a mid-sized dog and perfect for an apartment, and we were naive and knew nothing about checking paw size, so we said that yes, we’d like to meet him. They brought us and the puppy to a small room where we could get acquainted. In those few minutes, he went from an anonymous mutt to Zeb. We didn’t meet any other dogs, and when we went to tell an employee, we couldn’t find anyone, so we took the opportunity to spend a few more minutes in the room with our new dog.

Greg brought him home from the pound a week later. Never had it been so hard to leave for class as when my puppy made his first explorations of our second-floor home. He loved to sit under the dining room chairs, contort himself into the fireplace, and conquer the mountain of blankets in the corner. He surpassed 35 pounds before his first birthday.

Zeb was never short for anything; it was the name I had always wanted to give a dog. The nicknames came later – Zebulon, Zebby Zeberton, Old Man. I accidentally trained him to go outside for the last time at night by singing “Outside, outside. Puppy going outside, outside.” He refused to go out at night without it, opting instead to stare at you before you gave him his cue. The first time he went outside in the rain when we moved to our house, he got “stuck” under the azaleas and looked at Greg like he was waiting for him to turn off the water. Greg carried his 95-pound butt inside.

When I was pregnant for the first time, Noah decided he was ready even if the rest of my body hadn’t received the memo. We headed to the doctor for my regular appointment, but my blood pressure had already started spiking. Zeb knew something was wrong with me before I did and for the first and only time, jumped in the car and refused to leave, moving from seat to seat until Greg eventually hauled him out. One medically induced labor and two days later, Zeb greeted Noah with the smallest of licks on the tip of the nose.

I do not want to say goodbye to him. Zeb was stinky and loud. He taught Rosie to howl at ambulances. He regularly ate monkey grass and dirt. He shed everywhere. He tolerated baby yanks, toddler tugs, and child hugs. He was my pillow and my friend. He gave me the weirdest ear kisses that felt like he was trying to take out my studs.

As Noah so eloquently put it, it is not accepting the days without him that is the hardest, it is saying the last goodbye. He was simply the best boy, and I will miss him.