The Last Dog

And somewhere Sophie is furious I did not title it: THE CRIMES COMMITTED AGAINST ME BY SPRINKLERS

Sophie died.

It’s hard for me to even type that, but she did, quite unexpectedly, in the middle of the night in March, two months ago. She experienced a syncope, then a series of cascading events, each one worse than the last, and I rushed her to the emergency vet where there were few options.

The kindest thing I could do for her was let her go. Impossible, demanding mercy.

Sophie is not the first dog I’ve lost. And now I have no dogs, which is existentially weird.

A lot of people in my life are perplexed by this, bothered by it almost, as though I’ve somehow altered their perception of reality too.

“Jen, when are you getting another dog?”

Friends send me links to dogs who need homes. I get texts with photos of three-legged min pins and messages that say, “This one. You should just go get this one.”

People ask the question gently, but with real confusion underneath it, as though my life no longer makes sense in its current form.

“Why do you not have dogs?”

I wish I could answer that question without writing an essay.

I don’t just adopt dogs. I make covenants with them. We meet, our nervous systems fuse together immediately — it’s happened again and again. There’s eye contact and then we’re bonded, and it’s painful to be apart and even more painful to keep living after they go.

In the past fifteen years, I have loved and let go of over thirty dogs.

Sophie was the last of a long procession of aging, senior, or special-needs, and often poorly behaved dogs.

When I adopted Sophie in 2022, I was married and already had three other dogs. She wasn’t supposed to become mine, but within the first twenty-four hours something clicked in her brain and she decided: That’s my human.

She immediately wanted to assume what she felt was her rightful place at the top of the hierarchy in the house, but Blue — my Tiny, Mighty Princess, my Biscuit — was already there in full terrible rat terrier mode and quickly informed Sophie that the throne was occupied.

Leonard and Gus, the two boys, were far more willing to go along with Sophie’s self-appointed authority.

When Blue passed away in October of 2023, Sophie finally assumed her rightful place as monarch.

Then she told me what to do every day for the rest of her life, and I happily complied.

She was, by all accounts, a legitimate psychopath.

No, I’m serious.

She had no teeth. She had bad knees. She had a grade 3 heart murmur. And she would attack anyone that pissed her off.

In the spirit of Villanelle, I was her Eve. I was the one precious thing in her world.

She may only have weighed six and a half pounds, but she was vicious. A tiny sentinel.

A few weeks after I adopted her, I opened the back door and startled a stray cat lounging on my patio like he paid rent. Before I could grab Sophie, she exploded across the yard, snarling, moving at a speed that seemed medically inadvisable.

The cat cleared the fence. Sophie looked prepared to follow. Then she strutted back to me, deeply pleased with herself, as if she had personally defended the kingdom.

After Gus passed away, during the last four months when it was just the two of us, I took her everywhere with me. If someone bumped into me in a store, she’d growl from inside her little bag.

People would say, “Oh, can I pet your dog?”

And I’d say, “Please don’t. She has no teeth, but she will bite you.”

Sometimes I’d take her to my parents’ house where she’d interact with my siblings’ dogs, and if any of them came too close to me, she would launch herself at them, full of sound and fury.

I’d hold her up in the air and say, “Sophie, stop getting so mad. It’s not good for your heart.”

She’d kick her little legs while spit flew out of her mouth, and then eventually she’d settle against my side and I’d feel her tiny body relax.

She couldn’t help it.

It’s who she was.

My Spicy Sofritas. The Spice Girl.

I loved her for it.

Every night, I had to carry Sophie outside to use the bathroom because she was deeply offended by inconvenience.

She had one pre-approved patch of short grass she liked near the house, and every night I had to make sure I got her out there before the sprinklers came on because if her feet got wet, she acted like I had personally betrayed her.

So I’d carry her outside against her will while she huffed dramatically in my arms, set her down on her approved little square of land, and wait while she sniffed the air like a tiny, furious land baron inspecting her territory.

And when she was done, she’d walk back to the patio, stop on the tile in front of the door, and just flop over onto her back with all four paws sticking up in the air, waiting for me to pick her up and carry her to bed.

Not asking. Expecting.

Like a queen being carried back to her chambers.

And of course I did it. Every single night.

In the final weeks of her life, I started picking her up and kissing her little face and saying, “Please don’t leave me, Sophie. I feel like you’re getting ready to leave me. Please don’t leave me.”

At the time, I didn’t understand why I kept saying it.

Nothing dramatic had happened yet. There wasn’t some clear event, some obvious medical revelation. But I think some part of me was already picking up on subtle shifts in her energy, her behavior, her presence — changes happening below language, below conscious thought.

Some preverbal part of me already knew. Or maybe love just notices departures before the mind can explain them.

About three days after she passed away, I had a dream that I was staying at a cabin with a bunch of people. There were double doors that opened out onto this green, forested landscape.

We were all sitting around eating and talking when suddenly this giant white wolf trotted through the doors, and everyone panicked.

But I didn’t.

I looked at her and thought, well, hello.

I wasn’t afraid of her at all.

I just said, “You come with me.”

So we walked together down a hallway into my room, where another set of double doors opened onto a huge skyline. The sun was setting. Beyond the hill outside, the land dropped off into the distance.

There was a daybed in the room, and the wolf jumped up beside me. I wrapped my arms around the neck of this massive animal and we fell asleep together.

And in the dream, I slept for what felt like a very long time.

Then eventually she nudged me awake.

She jumped down from the bed, and I sat up and scratched her face and kissed her forehead and said, “I’ll see you later, my friend.”

And this giant white wolf walked through the doors, then paused once at the horizon to look back over her shoulder at me before disappearing over the hill.

I woke up crying because that’s who Sophie really was.

That’s who she was underneath the tiny body, bad knees, missing teeth, heart murmur, and psychotic rat terrier rage.

And maybe that’s why we understood each other so well.

She came into my life right when my own body stopped cooperating with who I felt myself to be.

I have loved so many dogs.

And when I die, my singular hope is that I’ll hear God say, “Well done, my good and faithful servant,” just before I’m swarmed by all of them — knocked to the ground, covered in kisses, surrounded completely.

May I never leave.

Because honestly, I think that’s the first moment I’ll finally feel home.

You make known to me the path of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence,
with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

-Psalms 16:11

Epilogue: A Partial Accounting

Evidence submitted in the matter of: Love v. Mortality