Truman the Wonderdog

 Hey pals,

This blog is basically buried at the moment but I'm using this space to mark the passing of Truman, the most incredible dog a fella could ever ask for, and a tremendously beloved member of the King family. 

My parents adopted Truman back in 2005, when I was living at home through a thoroughly disgruntled year of working retail and figuring out what post-college life was going to be. Through an accident of my weird schedule and his arrival, we basically became best buds, usually hanging out as the only two creatures stirring at home during office-work hours.

In that way, 2020 was something of a full circle moment for us. In the fall, when mom and dad drove out to Brooklyn to help Kat recover from her cancer surgery, I came out to look after Truman, which saved us all from some tough decisionmaking, as he'd clearly lost a step or two. (In truth, we first thought we'd have to put Truman down back in 2016, so he's had multiple lease extensions on life.) This was different - unlike the Idiot Years, I wasn't playing hide-and-go-seek with him or chasing him around the house, but taking a good hour to walk the neighborhood that once was a twenty-minute walk. He was a creature of loyalty and routine, but after a couple of nights of mom and dad being gone, he started sleeping in my room. (Except for a brief interlude when he couldn't make it up the stairs, after which I slept on the couch on the main floor to save him the trip.)

He was a stubborn weirdo, who decided to enforce routines the rest of us didn't know (or necessarily agree) that we'd established. He killed probably over a dozen skunks, and no matter how miserable he was he didn't want to leave the corpses to get the stinging spray out of his eyes. Back in 2016 when we thought he was on the brink of passing, mom started giving him a mixture of homemade chicken and rice that became his staple because he refused to eat dog food once that bridge had been crossed. He was a big dumb dummy, and I will love him forever.

Here's how full-circle things were. After probably a half-decade of being done jumping on the couch, Truman joined me back in October.

 

I can't complain about the incredibly rich and full time we had together. It's excessive, to have a dog live to be 17 years or older (we think he was a couple years old when we adopted him) and I'm so embarrassingly lucky to have had this last year close enough to home that I was able to see him and end every trip knowing I'd said goodbye and shown my love. But it still feels: real bad! And I will miss him: maybe forever!

 Here's to you, Truman. I hope you are at peace. I love you, buddy.