This is one of the hardest things I’ve ever forced myself to write. My beautiful little lady, Faylinn, is dead. It’s been several weeks since it occurred, and yet as I try to type this out on my keyboard, fresh tears burn my face as if it had just happened. I miss her so much. Every morning she’d greet me by hopping up into bed and showering my cheeks with her tiny kisses. When I came home from work she would perk up and trot over to my side, her little stubby tail wagging. For dog owners, the love they give us is so pure that when it suddenly gone, it is as if an elemental part of our soul has been torn from us. The pain is ragged. The grief crushing.
But I don’t want this post to be about me. I want to document the special moments she brought to our lives. The whys of why I will cherish her memory forever.
As I wrote previously, Faylinn did not immediately click with our family. Distant and aloof were her two main moods. I didn’t mention this previously, but we almost returned her to rescue organization we adopted her from. She just didn’t seem to be happy. First, there was her name. My wife and I sounded like demented parrots whenever we tried calling her “Suzi”. We would follow her around crowing out, “Suzi! Suuzzzi!” and get absolutely zero response. Then there was the fact that she clearly did not like men, self included. I remember the moment things turned around clearly. I had just come home from work. The day sucked. I plopped down into my chair in the family room and began trying to massage the stress out of my forehead. When out of the corner of my eye I saw the dog charging me from the kitchen. I dropped my hands to the armrests, unsure what was about to happen, when “Suzi” leaped into the air and swiped at my arm with her tiny, Tyrannosaurs-Rex-like paw. It was as if she was screaming, “Hey! You! Pet me!” Betty and I looked at each other, cracking up with laughter. In that instant, all the worry and stress of my day vanished.
“I guess that settles it,” I said. “We’re keeping her.”
It wasn’t too long after that I think that we discovered her name. My wife calls it “her Rumpelstiltskin moment”.
“Faylinn?” Betty said, looking in the dog’s direction.
And she came running, her ears at the ready, and her stubby tail a-waggin’. We could almost hear her say, “Yes! That’s my name! Faylinn! That’s me!”
Rumpelstiltskin is an appropriate reference. Thinking back, from the adoption of Chaos, to the addition of Jessie, and then the death of Chaos followed by bringing Faylinn into the family, life with those three dogs has been filled with fairy-tale moments. And one of those fairy-tale moments involves a giant, sort of. One of my dearest friends, his name is Rob, is 6’10”. I don’t know how much he weighs, but he is a very large man. “Imposing” one might say. The first time Faylinn locked eyes on him she about jumped a foot into the air and ran away. During the evening she would peer around corners, watching Rob. When Rob looked in her direction, she would whimper and hide. For as much as it hurt Rob’s feelings, it was absolutely adorable to watch. Over the years, as Faylinn revealed more and more of herself to us, and through the persistence of Rob, he became one of her favorite people. I can picture so clearly in my mind right now her sitting next to Rob’s hulking form on our couch. Him, smiling as he strokes her ears and scruff. And she, her tongue hanging out as she cranes her neck to look up at him, just beaming with happiness.
Those moments of her showing affection are what really stick with me. And they sting to recall. Because she truly cared for us. My words won’t do it justice. You weren’t there. Whenever I was hurt or stressed, she would find me and make me pet her. She did the same for my wife while she was recuperating from foot surgery. Jessie, even all these years later, is still such a mamma’s boy that any bump or bit of discomfort makes him cry out. When he did, Faylinn would race to his side and sniff him all over as if to say, “Are you alright? Tell me where it hurts. I’m here!” That’s not to say those two didn’t argue. They did. Often. Teeth would be bared. Close range barks unleashed. But whatever it was that triggered the argument would become quickly forgotten, and by nighttime the two would be cuddling.
But her love wasn’t just reserved for us. Post-pandemic, we fell into a routine where Betty and I would take the dogs with us to pet-friendly bars. Little Faylinn, whom when we first got her was so distant, in recent years blossomed into a social butterfly during those visits. Yes, we kept them both on a leashes, but Faylinn would wander, walking up to people, wagging her stubby and forcing them to pet her. If heaps of praise could be measured in actual weights, what Faylinn earned in those moments would measure into the hundreds of tons.
During one of those trips this past summer, Faylinn revealed something about her life prior to entering ours. The bar was packed that evening, as there were several events taking place in addition to the regulars in attendance. As we were scanning the room for a place to sit, one of the bartenders we’ve gotten to know over the years walked past us on his way to take a smoke break. While we were talking, another regular patron strolled past and chocked the bartender on the back of the shoulder to say goodbye. It was a simple gesture and not a hard punch at all, yet it did startle this man whom Faylinn had become fond of. In that moment of surprise, Faylinn went berserk. My little girl twirled into a barking ball of fear and anger. Quickly we got her out of the bar, yet she kept straining against her leash. Were she not leashed or if we had let go, she would have never have stopped running away. We retreated home, trying to calm Faylinn down as best we could. She had had a panic attack. Watching someone she cared about suffer what appeared to be a blow that angered him triggered something in her that we never knew existed. Those initial weeks of her distrusting men suddenly made a lot more sense. We will never know what she went through before we came along.
The last time I wrote about Faylinn in this blog we’d had just been through a major medical scare. In late 2022, a tumor was found on Faylinn’s bladder. Thankfully the surgery to remove it succeeded and the tumor turned out to be benign. However she never fully recovered. Since that time she started having trouble controlling her bladder. First it was due to the surgery, and then because of her age. Over the years she suffered a number of illnesses. Yet she always bounced back after a trip to the vet and a couple of days of home cooked chicken and rice. And so it seemed that when she woke up in the middle of the night a few weeks ago and vomited, it was going to be another of those weeks. I took her to the vet the following morning, yet this time things were different. Our vet was very dismayed by what she observed. There was bruising along Faylinn’s legs and in her mouth. She’d always been a touch anxious when at the vet, but this time she was listless. Blood work was done. All Faylinn’s levels were dangerously low: platelets and red blood cells were about a third of what they should have been. But our vet (who has consistently been nothing short of incredible) gave us a plan. She gave Faylinn some antibiotics and a shot of steroids, told us to make sure she kept hydrated and fed, and we would recheck her blood levels in two days. Unfortunately, she never made it through those next two days. The following evening, Faylinn didn’t even have enough energy to stand when she had to go to the bathroom. As my wife and I discussed rushing her to the hospital, she threw up again. With barely a word to each other, Betty and I scooped her up and into the car. We raced to the animal hospital. In the backseat Faylinn’s breathing had become shallow and ragged. I continued stroking her fur, telling her she was loved and that she was such a good, good girl. Faylinn had turned deaf years ago, but never stopped us from talking to her. And I certainly wasn’t going to stop talking to her in this moment of need.
When we ran into the ER, Faylinn felt so light in my arms. As soon as I handed her over to the nurses, I fucking fell apart. Thank God for Betty. She signed the papers and answered the questions as my reality dissolved around me. I thought about Chaos. I didn’t want to make that choice again. I couldn’t sign off on another family member’s death again. I don’t know if thankful is the right word, but it comes the closest to my feelings looking back at those moments. It turned out that the choice wasn’t ours to make. Within minutes of being given a private waiting room, the staff came back and informed us that Faylinn had passed. I’ve never cried so hard in my life as I did when they brought her little body back for us to say our final goodbyes. The grief. . . even now it’s unbearable. Still so raw. It hurts.
I have to focus. I need to finish this. I need this.
Yeah, I’m not doing so great. Thanksgiving opened a whole new set of wounds when all my in-laws’ grand kids started asking, “Where’s the little doggie?” Christmas. Jesus. I don’t even want to think about the amount of crying that will happen on Christmas morning when only Jessie is there to open a stocking.
Poor Jessie. Twice now he has had to live through the death of a sibling. So far, he’s handling it far better than the death of Chaos. When Chaos died, he completely shut down. The first few days following the death of Faylinn, his confusion was clear. In the house and outside he kept going to her usual places and sniffing for her. When we put the leash on him for walks or car rides, he didn’t react. Still three weeks later I will catch him looking out the fence for her or sleeping in her kennel. But last night we took him to the bar with us and he was happy. Not quite the usual level of excitement when it was the two of them, but an improvement none the less.
We aren’t sure if we will get another dog while Jessie is still alive. He himself is 16 years old. He’s deaf and 70% blind. Right now he is getting spoiled. That is for sure. I don’t know how he would react to a new dog in his life, especially a puppy. Yet when his time comes, if there isn’t another dog added to the family prior to his passing, than that will mean the end of the fairy tale. The story that began with Chaos, my puppyboy, who made my heart grow three sizes in one night, which grew in the telling with the addition of little Jessie, who didn’t know how to dog. And then came Faylinn, our graceful lady and little nurse who healed our hearts after Chaos died. That’s over 22 years of stories. That’s 22 years of family. I don’t want it to end.
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Faylinn
August 13th, 2008(?) – November 5th, 2025
