Goodbye, best friend

19 min readMar 14, 2022

“In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Bunter died in his sleep, peacefully but unexpectedly, early on Valentine’s morning — a month ago today. His little heart, so full of love for the world, gave out. I’m writing this to share his life, our life together really, and to remember and celebrate him. There are a lot of Mary Oliver poems here. That woman knew about dogs and she knew about death. She has been one of my primary oracles over the past four weeks.

I should say up front that I don’t like lazy metaphors about dogs. Bunter was not my fur baby. He was not a substitute child. He was my dog, and, as dogs are wont to be, he was my best friend. I’m also averse to treating death euphemistically. Terms like “passing on” or “losing” feel, to me, like sleights of hand offered to protect us from being forced to acknowledge our own mortality. But I don’t want to avoid acknowledging my own mortality. I believe that it is not only useless to fear death, but counterproductive. Epicurus’s bluntness on this point (and the clarity of his injunction not to worry about death in the tetrapharmakos) has long influenced how I orient myself towards mortality. So too has Forster, who saw that death is necessary to strengthen love:

While to Helen the paradox became clearer and clearer. “Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him.” Behind the coffins and the skeletons that stay the vulgar mind lies something so immense that all that is great in us responds to it. Men of the world may recoil from the charnel-house that they will one day enter, but Love knows better. Death is his foe, but his peer, and in their age-long struggle the thews of Love have been strengthened, and his vision cleared, until there is no one who can stand against him.

Grief is the price we pay for loving in our mortal state. There is no purer love than that from (and ideally for) a dog. So, too, for the grief that one feels — that I feel — at the death of a dog: it is pure and uncomplicated and searing hot. Dogs are, after all, the only species we know of that, when distressed, derive more comfort from another species than from their own. And I suspect I’m not the only dog owner who, when taking their puppy home, whispered a promise to give it the best dog life they could. I’m sure there are details I got wrong, but I believe I kept that promise to Bunter. And so my grief is also pure enough to be uncomplicated by regret…or by anger at him for dying. And that is a comfort.

How it began

“How It Begins” by Mary Oliver
A puppy is a puppy is a puppy.
He’s probably in a basket with a bunch of other puppies.
Then he’s a little older and he’s nothing
but a bundle of longing.
He doesn’t even understand it.
Then someone picks him up and says,
“I want this one.”

With Bunter, though, that’s not how it began. He chose me. I had always wanted a dog. My childhood had been full of their bright, fervent joy and steadfast companionship. AB was opposed at first, and then hesitant, suspicious that a dog portended “the end of fun” (his actual words). He finally assented after we bought our first flat. And so, on 16 May 2013, we found ourselves in a house in a suburban south London neighborhood I’d never heard of. I was on guard against puppy mills, and so as we walked from the train station we agreed on a safe word. If I uttered it (“this one looks just like my sister’s dog”) I told AB that I needed him to let me cut the visit short and report them to the RSPCA.

We met two cared-for, bright-faced adult Westies and their litter of five puppies, so the safe word was unnecessary. The pups could have been mistaken for polar bear cubs. One of them had already been claimed; he had purple nail polish on his back right claw. AB and I sat on the floor while the breeders lifted the other four, half asleep, out of a box and put them between us. Bunter was the first to rouse himself. He wobbled over to me on his little babydog legs, licked my right forefinger, and claimed me as his. We returned four weeks later to bring him home. The joy he brought me, from that day forward, was immeasurable.

How it might have ended

In August 2015 we took Bunter up to Yorkshire for our friend Emma’s wedding. At the end of the trip, we were walking home from King’s Cross station. I can’t remember what he picked up off the pavement — a chicken bone, probably — but in trying to retrieve it from his mouth, he snapped at me for the only time in his life. A few days later, he stopped eating. We took him to his vet. There was no obvious blockage, so they gave him some anti-nausea medication and sent us home. Two days after that he still hadn’t eaten, and he was becoming lethargic. The vet gave us a high-calorie chicken broth and an oral syringe. But he kept fading away. He didn’t want to be held. The dance of joy he celebrated whenever I came home was replaced by a slightly raised head and a weak tail wag. He was slipping out of life.

Thankfully, his wonderful vet (and our wonderful neighbor) figured out that he had Addison’s Disease. With a daily hormone replacement, he recovered. He was very lucky. We were very lucky. He had been at death’s door, and then we got six and a half more years with him. And they were good years: AB lost his hesitancy about having a dog, and we never took him for granted again.

Loving and learning

Thus Bunter entered the prime of his life. He made it to dog adulthood, and he thrived in it. I mainly learned two things from Bunter as a puppy. The first was that it’s okay to give in to one’s relentless curiosity. Desperate to know what’s behind a curtain? Go check! The worst that can happen is that someone scolds you, but at least you’ll know. The second is that sometimes you need to pee when you wake up, but you can still go right back to sleep.

As an adult, though, Bunter was better for me than I could have thought possible. He brought me more joy than I’ll be able to remember through the rest of my life. But every memory of him is a blessing. Rather than trying to construct a narrative around these recollections, I’ll leave them as individual points of light that can continue to illuminate my path even now:

He fully embraced his dog agency. He’d go say hi to a group of dogs, or run with the pack when they all went after a ball, but then he’d quickly peel off to smell things on his own. Likewise, he’d sometimes bring a toy over — his bun, perhaps — to play. But woe betide you if you threw it when he wanted to play tug: he’d deliver a look of withering scorn before finding a better way to use his time. It was the same if you sneezed while making his dinner. He’d refuse to touch it…which obviously caused no end of worrying on our part.
His walker Fenia told us she’d never met a dog so particular about who his friends were. Other dogs want to be friends with everyone. Bunter had a small number of sworn enemies (two dogs at Bevin Court for reasons we never understood, and one dog who lived on Conant Street). He was politely indifferent to most dogs and humans, especially those who seemed overly keen or familiar. With enough contact, he’d generally come around, and once he did, his affections were unwavering.
He never begged for human food, but he did love to be included in dinner. If it was just me and AB eating at home, he’d either take himself to the sofa, where he would keep an eye on us, or he’d consent to sit on the chair at the head of the table and watch us intently as we ate and talked to each other (and to him) about our days.
Like all dogs, he was a creature of habit. Some of his habits that I loved best were related to sleeping. Bunter liked to go to bed at 9pm. If we were home in London, he’d give me a long, meaningful look and then take himself upstairs. If we were out, he would approach me, tap my foot with his paw, and let me pick him up, where he’d fall asleep on my lap. More than once, that happened during a dinner, and more than once I dropped food on him while continuing to eat.
He had another cut off around 10.30pm. Before that, if there happened to be a gentleman caller, Bunter would vacate the bed for the sofa, knowing that there would be no attention for him. After 10.30, he would continue sleeping on the bed, nonplussed by whatever else was happening. Before his 9 o’clock bedtime, of course, he’d try to make eye contact with whoever was bottoming.
We were told that Westies are not lap dogs, but Bunter loved nothing more than sleeping on one of our chests. For several years in London I’d get up around 5.30am, make myself a cup of coffee, and read for an hour or so in a rocking chair. Until he was 6 or 7, he’d get up with me. When he tired of trying to kiss each sip of coffee out of my mouth (perhaps for the milk?) he would fall asleep, half under the blanket, with one of his forepaws over my heart and, often as not, his snout tucked up under my chin.

He loved toddlers, whom he knew from experience would often drop food. Very small babies held no interest for him. But in between was a danger zone: a crawling infant was, apparently, in his walnut-sized brain, prey. And he would stalk/hunt the poor things if we didn’t lock him away.
He adored his walker Fenia, who called him “my hero”. Whenever she came to pick him up, he would dance with joy, and that brought me so much happiness. Every day when he got home from his walk I would ask him if he’d been a good boy. Fenia would intervene to say “He was an angel. He’s always an angel.
He also adored our London housekeeper Annie, though after she left he would methodically, one by one, remove all the toys that she had put away, and scatter them around the room.
SInce we called him Bunter Bear it was easy to add his name to lots of songs. My go-to artists included Fleetwood Mac (“If I live to see seven Bunters”), Simon & Garfunkel (“I am just a poor Bear, though my story’s seldom told”), and Bob Dylan (“May you grow up to be Bunter; May you grow up to be Bear”). He would invariably get an erection when I sang to him. And other times just watching me. Which was weird because he was castrated when he was six months old.
He spent the first six years of his life living with us on the 4th & 5th floors of our building. He could watch birds out the windows…and foxes, at night, when he’d stand on one of our heads to get a better angle down toward the gardens surrounding out building. That may be why he loved our local coffee shop so much. Any time we walked down Amwell Street he’d try to pull me inside. He loved to sit on the bench under the window and look out down Inglebert Street towards St Mark’s church in Myddelton Square. A cat or a squirrel crossing the street would get his full attention, and even an attempted escape. The woman who works there thought, for years, that his name was Best Friend, because I called him that as much as I called him anything else.

He would stay close to us if we were walking (unless his prey drive was activated), but if we sat down he’d wander off in wider and wider circles, always coming back to check in, but keen to explore the world and its smells. We once found him in a stand-off with a Prius in Percy Circus, refusing to let it pass. Silly old bear, we said.
When AB and I first separated, I would get very sad. Bunter would sense those moments and give me cuddles (cuds from my bud; smooch from my pooch; care from my bear). And even when his prey drive was activated, if I fell over and groaned, he would run back to me to check that I was okay. He wanted so badly to take care of me, and he did.
He only properly ran away once. We were having dinner at the Hawthorn Barn in Provincetown in August 2019 and as I finished my food I noticed he was gone. The barn is fairly isolated, surrounded by dunes and pitch pines. I walked around it once shouting his name. Then another time singing his favorite song (“The Bells of St Mary’s” by Bing Crosby, which always soothed him when he was stressed). Then I walked the path from the barn to the road shouting his name, and again singing the song. Nothing. I was very worried about him, both because of the coyotes — what an awful death that would have been for him — but also because after 5 or 6 days without his pills he’d get really sick. I got on my bike. It was dark now. And started heading toward Bradford shouting for him. I got ⅔ of the way there when I heard something. I glanced behind me and he was chasing me. I was overjoyed to see him, though for the rest of the night he definitely thought of himself as a wolf, and would only sit with the biggest man at the party. Bless him.
He loved bike rides. He tolerated me singing “Dog on a Bike” while the wind (and, doubtless, the smells carried on the wind) whipped through his long white locks. He also tolerated me reminding him that he was my dog and I was his human…and then immediately clarifying that I didn’t that I possessed him; he was mine in that he was the dog in my life. And I the human in his.
The moment, in public, where Bunter would recognize someone he knew still makes my heart leap with joy. Is that your Andrew? Is that your Keats? Is that your Dorothy? Is that your Kevin? Is that your Jonathan? Is that your Benji?

There are a hundred other stories I could tell about him. But they all come back to one thing: he brought me joy. Every day for almost nine years. I was lucky he picked me to be his human.

How it ended

AB and I were on our first proper holiday since reconciling in 2020 (and, therefore, since separating in 2018). We were in New Orleans visiting our friends Terrence and Bret. We were watching the Super Bowl and I was eating my weight in guacamole. Fenia called. Bunter had eaten his breakfast, but refused his dinner. He’d deigned to consume a few treats. He couldn’t settle, but he was still cuddly and in decent spirits. She asked for his vet’s number, and I sent it to her. She called him. He surmised that Bunter had gastroenteritis, which has been going around London dogs this winter. He recommended she let Bunter sleep on a hot water bottle, and take him out for a walk every hour or so, to help the gas shift in his system so he could sleep.

Fenia set an alarm for every hour overnight so that she could walk him. On his last walk, he saw a cat on top of a fence and wanted to chase it, and then expected praise from her for being such a good dog. Which he was. Then, he curled up next to her leg on the hot water bottle. She was petting him and he took a deep breath and deflated. And he was dead. She called us with the news as we were getting ready for bed — just before 6am London time. She was distraught. We were heartbroken. But we were also so, so grateful that he had been with someone he loved at the end.

His little heart had been weakened by a lifetime of overuse, both because of the Addison’s and from loving us so single mindedly. The gastroenteritis was just more than it could support. And so he died peacefully at the age of 3.229 kilodays.

How it’s going

I never went simply through denial or anger or bargaining. Am I depressed now? Am I accepting? I’m not sure.

I’m Catholic, so I constantly expect people to die. Every time I say goodbye to someone I love, I think about whether it will be the last time I get to hug them. It doesn’t keep me in a morbid place, but it does add urgency to the project of loving them. It was the same with Bunter. The last day I saw him was the 9th of January, before he and Andrew flew back from Provincetown to London. We were at our friend Jeremy’s place spending a stormy afternoon in his hot tub with our Jeremy and our friends PJ and Lukus. At one point Bunter managed to get off of the gated deck and run off. PJ’s dog Olly (the snitch) alerted us to Bunter’s escape. I set off to wander the forest calling for him, but within a minute or two he was bounding through the trees back to me.

“The First Time Percy Came Back” by Mary Oliver
The first time Percy came back
he was not sailing on a cloud.
He was loping along the sand as though
he had come a great way.
“Percy,” I cried out, and reached to him —
those white curls —
but he was unreachable. As music
is present yet you can’t touch it.
“Yes, it’s all different,” he said.
“You’re going to be very surprised.”
But I wasn’t thinking of that. I only
wanted to hold him. “Listen,” he said,
“I miss that too.
And now you’ll be telling stories
of my coming back
and they won’t be false, and they won’t be true,
but they’ll be real.”
And then, as he used to, he said, “Let’s go!”
And we walked down the beach together.

He and I sat on Jeremy’s kitchen floor for about thirty minutes then. I asked him to be good to AB while they were in London together, and not to miss me too much. I told him that if we never saw each other again he should know how much I loved him and how glad I was that he picked me to be his best friend.

Bunter and I last summer, at Bunter House

Forster was right, though: premonition is not preparation. I’m still crying a few times a week. For a fortnight or so I was crying at least once a day, so this is progress of a sort. In the first days, my mind frantically searched for a way to make sense of his death. I thought about the fact that since being a gay man’s dog is the pinnacle of mortal existence, and since he was so good at his life as one, he must have escaped the cycle of death and rebirth and have become one with the universe. I thought about how it was the longest we’d ever gone without seeing each other, and he may have died of a broken heart. I thought about how he never liked when AB & I fought — he’d go upstairs with mournful eyes — and that perhaps, having seen us happily back together, he felt his work on earth was done. I wasn’t looking for comfort exclusively; just to make sense of it.

I spent much of that first week, between the waves of grief, thinking about why the death of a loved one feels so disorienting. One source felt neurological. The synaptic pathways through one’s brain still sheath the loved one in the category of “life”, which then has to be overruled by conscious thought, creating a repeated instance of cognitive strain and dissonance. Another reason, perhaps related, felt narrative. We tell stories based on a set of (often unspecified) premises upon which contingencies are built that drive the story forward. Those premises frame the story but may sit outside it. One of the premises in our daily lives is that B is alive. B’s death requires a little modification at the beginning of each story…but normally we modify stories through contincies (X could happen, or Y). So suddenly B’s death gets grouped with contingencies. It becomes an optional event. That’s a slippery slope, but as time passes the event becomes a premise.

I could observe those patterns of thought, which somehow made me less susceptible to their emotional force. But also part of my brain can also just keep thinking that Bunter is spending the winter in London with AB. So maybe check in on me after I’m back there in mid April.

In the meanwhile, my grief evolves. Last week the sharp pain of his death itself lost its primacy to a heavy, dull acknowledgment that the whole of the future excludes Bunter. It’s still sad, but it’s like the difference between new and chronic pain.

As I said before, a dog isn’t a human. When it comes to grief, that seems to cut in both directions. On the one hand, we know the score when we get a dog. Their lifespans are so much shorter than ours. We don’t have expectations, however poorly articulated, about how their life will evolve in the future. I joked that Bunter was working on a biography of Churchill, but really I just wanted to keep being able to love and be loved by him. A dog’s love is so pure that there is less room for the conflicted forms of grief that so many people experience when another human dies. I don’t have to think about the times Bunter disappointed me. I only have to miss his inexhaustible enthusiasm for being together. On the other hand, though, we don’t have shared cultural rituals to say goodbye to a dog. That, somehow, makes mourning a dog feel self-indulgent, when really it’s just a lot of extra emotional labor to figure out one’s own way.

One thing has comforted me throughout the last month: knowing that Bunter wasn’t scared or alone or in pain in his final moments. Do I wish I had another 8 years with him? Absolutely. Would I trade another 8 years for him dying a painful or violent death? Absolutely not. I used to worry that he’d be run over by a car. Or eaten by a coyote. Or die in a fire. I miss him, but I’m so relieved that he died peacefully.

What’s next

I dreamt a week ago that I’d gotten a new Westie puppy. Even in the dream I knew it was too soon. We’ll absolutely get another dog…but probably not for a year or so. I want to give myself time to mourn Bunter. But I also want to make sure I’m ready to appreciate the next dog (whom I’m already calling Gerald Whimsey, Duke of Denver) space to be itself rather than being directly compared to Bunter (who was, after all,100% wonderdog).

Before then, Bunter will be taxidermied. Yes, it’s atypical, but fuck it. I want to keep saying “Hello, best friend” and “Good night, best friend” to him, like I have for the past nine years. Already, thinking about him brings me more smiles than tears, and I sincerely believe every time I see him for the rest of my life, I will smile. And that is a continual blessing.

“For I Will Consider My Dog Percy” by Mary Oliver
For he was made small but brave of heart.
For if he met another dog he would kiss her in kindness.
For when he slept he snored only a little.
For he could be silly and noble in the same moment.
For when he spoke he remembered the trumpet and when he scratched he struck the floor like a drum.
For he ate only the finest food and drank only the purest of water, yet would nibble of the dead fish also.
For he came to me impaired and therefore certain of short life, yet thoroughly rejoiced in each day.
For he took his medicines without argument.
For he played easily with the neighborhood’s bull mastiff.
For when he came upon mud he splashed through it.
For he was an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For he listened to poems as well as love-talk.
For when he sniffed it was as if he were being pleased by every part of the world.
For when he sickened he rallied as many times as he could.
For he was a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For we humans can seek self-destruction in ways he never dreamed of.
For he took actions both cunning and reckless, yet refused always to offer himself to be admonished.
For his sadness though without words was understandable.
For there was nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there was nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
For he was of the tribe of Wolf.
For when I went away he would watch for me at the window.
For he loved me.
For he suffered before I found him, and never forgot it.
For he loved Anne.
For when he lay down to enter sleep he did not argue about whether or not God made him.
For he could fling himself upside down and laugh a true laugh.
For he loved his friend Ricky.
For he would dig holes in the sand and then let Ricky lie in them.
For I often see his shape in the clouds and this is a continual blessing.

Until we meet again, best friend, thank you.