Commentary: So Long, Mutt: Saying Goodbye to a Friend

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There’s an old Calvin & Hobbes strip in which the titular duo find a sick raccoon and take it home. The animal dies a few days later, and a sad 6-year-old boy, eyes wide with sadness, stuffs his hands in pockets. “What a stupid world,” he says to his stuffed tiger. 

I couldn’t find my dog Wednesday morning. We just moved to a new house. He’d been adjusting to his new shock collar, but he only wears it when I’m gone. When I’m around, he’s been good about staying within shouting distance of the back door, though he’s made a few dalliances into the neighboring yards. A pointed yell usually brought him loping across the field for a scolding. 

Wednesday was different. It’s a long driveway, and by the time I reached its end, scanning the horizon for my bouncing, blockheaded mutt, listening for his ever-so-rare bark, I was almost on top of him. He was in the middle of the street. I won’t describe the scene, but it was … jolting. 

I adopted Achilles on the Friday of the first game of the 2014 prep football season, drifting after a breakup and looking for company around the house. A Craigslist ad in Chehalis offered a healthy “American Bulldog,” though what I found was a scrawny, wide-eyed, underfed pit bull-mix with a back scratched raw due to a flea allergy. He hadn’t been fixed, or given enough food, exercise, or time outside of an apartment to be happy.

He was, without question, the most pathetic excuse for a pet I’d ever seen, and I immediately agreed to take him. 

After a trip to the vet and a few weeks of a steady diet and exercise, he was fat and happy. He walked downtown to the bank with me every other Friday and explored miles of trails in Olympic National Forest. He didn’t lift a paw when my 6-year-old son tried to ride him like a horse, but he barked like mad at a questionable stranger who approached us on a late-night walk down Pearl Street. He could, on rare occasions, look as mean as a bloodthirsty junkyard hound, but his default expression was one of confusion and sadness. He regularly fell off of couches and benches, landing on his volleyball-sized head and bouncing up as if he’d been the victim of a cruel prank. For some reason he was confused by the act of going down — but not up — stairways. He was built like a linebacker — all shoulders and chest with a massive head, 70 pounds of stocky muscle and unabashed love on top of short, thick legs — but managed to look ridiculous with floppy ears, droopy jowls and sad brown eyes. He yawned, he sighed, and he was happiest with someone to hug. 

More than once I asked Achilles, standing on the porch after a long night at work, how on earth I wound up with him. I never wanted a dog. I didn’t see the point in a furry, slobbering, defecating beast in constant need of food and attention. A fish, I always thought, would be plenty. 



“You don’t know how good you’ve got it,” I’d tell him, as he stared dumbly at me, begging for a snack or the leftovers of whatever I was eating. He was the best impulse decision I’d ever made, and I think he knew exactly how good he had it. 

Every lucky dog becomes part of a family, and Achilles, within days, became part of mine. He squeezed his way in and flopped his volleyball-sized head on my lap. No matter what happened, that dumb dog was going to be there at the end of the day, and that made any bad news a little bit more bearable. He was my prince, my buddy, my fallback; having taken that wreck of an animal in and nursed him to health and happiness gave me an immense sense of pride. 

I buried Achilles Wednesday morning, about a half-hour after I found him, in his favorite corner of the yard. I’m not the crying type, but I sobbed like a kid who just lost his best friend, like a 6-year-old that doesn’t know what else to do. The house is too quiet and part of me is missing. 

What a stupid world, indeed.

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Aaron VanTuyl is the sports editor and an occasional columnist for The Chronicle. He can be reached at avantuyl@chronline.com.