And so, the day we’ve been dreading for a long time finally arrived. We had to say goodbye to Benson this weekend. Like all dogs, he was the absolute best dog in the universe and was full of so much love for us right up until the end.
He’s been such an integral part of our lives, an integral part of our family, for over 12 years. Looking back now, less than 24 hours later, it’s hard to believe how fast it all went by. I find myself looking back at random photos and videos that I’ve forgotten about and breaking down. I’m reliving and re-experiencing moments that we’ll never have with him again.
I know that someday soon we’ll all feel better, and feel less empty, and the memories of him will hurt less. But as I sit here at my desk, I look down at the spot where he’d be laying, and just can’t process the fact that he’s gone.
In late 2013, we ended up buying our first home. What better way to celebrate than by getting a brand new dog? Both Kerry and I grew up in homes with dogs, but neither of us had ever had a dog of our own since becoming adults and setting out on our own (cats, yes).
So, we took to Craigslist and reached out to a number of people and even visited a few places as well. This one looked cute. That one was too aggressive. This one was too old.
And then we stumbled upon a post and we just knew this was our dog. (High five to my wife for saving this):
They even had a number of YouTube videos! One example:
We contacted them, put down a deposit and then made our way to the adoption event a few days later.
His goofy personality and demeanor absolutely captured our hearts from the start. We loaded him in the car and took our first photo together as a family:
We get home and I think he immediately had second thoughts about this new arrangement. “Uh… wait a minute?”
And for that matter, so did our cats.
He quickly settled in, and that goofy, playful personality came back. And on top of that, his ears were starting to get locked in. They were HUGE!
We moved into our new home about a week later (so much change for this little guy in such a short time) and he quickly felt right at home. So much, that he started to adopt the cat scratching pad as his own personal bed.
Later, he upgraded it to a stool.
December 17th marked the first month adoptiversary of this pooch. I don’t think he was second guessing his decision anymore.
We would come to find out that this 50 pound dog (who was rapidly growing and ultimately ended up at about 70 pounds) was quite the snuggler and would eventually become the world’s biggest lap dog.
Our friends Mike and Rachel lived nearby. Benson quickly became besties with their dog, Nala. These two would get into a lot of trouble together during the brief time their lives overlapped (she passed away in 2020).
He ended up being pretty easy to train, too!
We never had any behavior problems with him. Oh… except for that one and only time… when I checked in on him from work via a webcam we had setup and I could only watch in horror as he ate my Dodgers’ baseball cap.
Oh. There was also that time that he decided that Christmas was over.
Oh, and there was also the time he decided to eat the corner of our couch. I don’t have pictures or evidence of it happening, but we know it was him! Outside of that though, he was perfectly behaved.
I mentioned this dog was goofy. One time, I came into the living room and found him sleeping like this.
I hear you, you’re saying “Dave, there is no way he was sleeping like that, you just took a picture as he was getting on the couch or something.” Here is video proof:
Another interesting thing we would discover… Benson really did not like water. Like, literally afraid of touching it / borderline allergic to it.
(Here is a picture I took while giving him a bath 2 months after we got him… he was definitely having second thoughts again…)
Our neighbor also had a dog around Benson’s age, Zoom. They also became fast friends and would have lots of play dates. He was a bit over-matched.
But they also spent a lot of quality time together. She also passed away in 2021 (these damn dogs can’t keep doing that to us).
Benson loved being outdoors and going on hikes. He would literally smile the whole time.
And speaking of smiles… oh man, when he smiled, he had the absolute best smile in the world…
In the summer of 2014, I took Benson to a fun event the Oakland A’s were hosting: “Bark at the Park,” I told myself that Benson and I would go every year. Alas, we only ever went this one time, but it was so much fun.
It was a rare sight to ever see Benson aggressive and worked up. But man, he really did not like Stomper. (Smart dog, he probably knew, even back in 2014, that John Fisher is an asshole.)
We brought him almost everywhere. Work, wine tasting, random dog friendly pubs, restaurants with dog friendly patios.
There were random occasions where Kerry and I would travel on vacation or go visit friends. So we would drop Benson off to stay with her parents while we were gone. One time, they decided to recreate our first family photo. Needless to say, Benson did not seem very amused.
During his stays with the grandparents, he would somehow discover cheese. Someone (Kerry’s mom, ah hem) took to feeding him cheese as a treat. And he ended up knowing the word. A mere mention of the word cheese would cause him to jump off the couch and run to the kitchen. If someone opened a new block of cheese, his nose would instantly pick it up and he would beg and beg until you gave in. (And how could you not?!)
We tried to not play into it, but for the last month of his life we let him have so. much. cheese.
I think he eventually started to think of himself as human. He’d often sit upright, then lean back just enough on the daybed, as if he were relaxing after a hard day of work.
Besides touching water, another thing that Benson exceedingly disliked were earthquakes, no matter how insignificantly tiny they were.
I think he was finally getting comfortable around our cats (and at least one of the cats, Tosh, was putting up with him a bit more).
Fast forward to 2016. Little did he know, everything was about to change…
How would he react? This 70 pound dude who we gave exclusive attention to for the last 3 years, who was our everything.
Look, I don’t speak dog. But, oh man, I think he was pretty obsessed from the moment we brought her home.
And the obsession went both ways.
In fact, things were going so well, we decided to bring another tiny human into the mix.
In all our years with him, I don’t think he ever barked or growled in anger at the girls once. We couldn’t have found a better pup for our kids.
Around the time our second kid was born, we bought a set of these blue throw pillows. I’ve written about this before, but for whatever reason, these things would become his absolute favorite thing to sleep on for the remainder of his time with us. Here are years worth of images… not a single one of these were taken on the same day.
He always loved going on adventures. Walks? Definitely? Car rides? Maybe his favorite? He could stick his head out the window and discover so many new smells. I’d have to make sure he was buckled in, otherwise his ears were liable to catch the wind and he’d sail away.
Here he is, discovering a uniquely human invention called a “car wash.”
In 2021, I read The Art of Racing in the Rain, and I think it’s the first time I have thought to myself, “holy crap… Benson is going to die someday.” There was just no way that was a possibility.
Later that year, he had started to have some issues getting up and would sometimes moan. He also stopped eating. So, I took him to the vet and they told me he had “severe spondylosis of the spine”, which is a chronic degenerative condition. (The vet told me that after looking at x-rays, they hadn’t seen a dog with such a severe case of spinal arthritis in a long time…)
Well, that’s fun. This is what I get for reading that book. Anyway, we were prescribed some meds, told to give him a new diet, and sent on our way. He seemed to recover pretty rapidly and it wasn’t long before he (and the girls) were back to their old ways.
After the arthritis diagnosis, we would try to do various things to make sure he felt better (ignore the kids randomly climbing on his back thing, we really tried to discourage that). We discovered one thing he absolutely loved… was butt slaps.
In 2022, he turned 9 years young. He was definitely looking a bit grey in the snout (and to be fair, so was I…)
Oh, here’s another random memory: throughout his entire life, this dog had some VIVID dreams. I’d be sitting in my office, hacking away and all the sudden you’d hear him yip and bark and pretend to run after something. I wonder if he ever caught it?
As time went on, a lot of our focus was on the girls and everything surrounding their life. Schools, camps, weekend activities, play dates. But he never took it personally. We’d come home from some activity and find him waiting in one of their rooms.
One of the things Benson would do (and he only did this in the morning, every morning) were these loud good morning barks. It was like he was excited everyone was up and ready to start the day. His bark was so powerful that he did this little hop with his front legs.
He did this every day, right up until about two weeks ago. They were loud. They could sometimes be obnoxious, but man I’m going to miss those barks.
I should have noticed this earlier. But he was looking pudgy! But it happened so gradually that you don’t really notice this day to day. But looking at pictures I see it. This was an early warning sign (not that it would have changed things) about a month and a half before we found out.
Fast forward to October 2024, where we get the congestive heart failure diagnosis. It would be the beginning of the end for this poor pooch and begin our relationship with the cardiology department at VCA as we took him in for semi-monthly checkups in order to drain fluid buildup in his abdomen from the tumors in his body (thank goodness for pet insurance).
The process involved shaving a random patch of fur (depending on where fluid buildup was), drugging him up, hooking up various tubes to drain him. These sessions lasted about an hour or so each time and left him looking so sad. He was drugged and confused after each visit and I think we kept it up because we selfishly couldn’t imagine having to say goodbye to him.
But he always quickly rebounded from these sessions, and except for the random shaved patches, you wouldn’t have known anything was wrong with him. Here is, less than 24 hours from getting drained the very first time, already following me around, ready to get treats at a moment’s notice.
Through it all, he would still smile, and he’d smile until almost the very end.
And then over New Years 2024/2025, we go on a family trip and the goofball goes and does this. Mind you, it’s been 3 months since his congestive heart failure diagnosis, a vet appointment from 4 years prior talked about the severe arthritis in his spine AND he is about 80 years old in dog years here:
“Did someone say cheese?!” He looked so young and spry on that trip!
But we didn’t know how much time we’d have left with him. We initially thought maybe 3 or 4 months? Maybe 6? I would come home from the cardiology appointments and just break down crying. All we could do was just love on him.
I wanted to be transparent with the girls so that they knew we only had so much time left (in hindsight, it was probably unfair of me to do this as there was so much stress, anguish, and uncertainty wrapped up around him eventually leaving us).
I remember one distinct session, sometime around April 2025 where the doctor thought Benson had maybe only 3 months left. All I could do was just numbly nod. We’d been grieving Benson on and off for nearly 6 months.
And here he is, about a day or two later telling us to not write him off yet.
He kept on through the entire summer. We ended up bringing him on a camping trip in August. When we planned it earlier in the year, we were like, “well, there’s no way he’ll be alive for this, so that simplifies things.”
At some point over the year, we realized that he had completely lost his hearing (maybe that’s why his barks were especially loud). If I walked out of the office, he’d follow me a few moments later, and if he didn’t see which way I went, he would start walking around the house, searching each room. I could stand behind him and yell “Benson!” (or even “cheese!”) and it just didn’t register.
In the fall, you could see that there were physical changes happening to him. He was getting lean. His ribs were visible. His muscles seemed to be wasting away. Even his spine was becoming more pronounced.
We took him to what would be his final cardiology appointment in November. They strongly suggested this should be the last session. The tumors continued to grow, on his heart, on his liver and potentially on his stomach.
Everything from then on became these sort of “last” milestones. His last road trip. His last Thanksgiving. His last Christmas. His last bath.
He started to have accidents in the house. We could sort of manage the situation if we were home and could be proactive about it, but if we went out, it was pretty much guaranteed he’d leave us a surprise.
We told ourselves we were going to say goodbye right after Christmas. But somehow, we still weren’t ready and neither was he. His body didn’t look all that great, yet he would still greet us with his good morning barks every day. He’d still wag his tail. He’d run(!) and chase you around the kitchen island if he knew you were hiding a treat from him.
The bad days didn’t outnumber the good days yet. There was still time.
But deep down, I think everyone knew there wasn’t much left.
One morning, I woke up and looked over to where Benson sleeps beside me and see this.
In January, I had ACL repair surgery and ended up staying on the couch in the living room for a few weeks because it was the most comfortable spot for my huge brace and crutches. From the moment I came home, something changed in him, like he had some renewed sense of purpose?
There were no more accidents, he had a lot of energy, he seemed happy and content. He would constantly check in on me, no matter what room I was in, as if making sure I were okay. If it weren’t for his ribs showing, you’d think he was perfectly fine.
And then it all went downhill so fast. He started needing our help getting up. A few times a day at first. And then within a week nearly every single time he wanted to get up. The accidents came back. He stopped eating.
We realized we hadn’t heard a good morning bark in at least a week. There were no more tail wags. He didn’t even whine anymore when he wanted us to help him up. He looked tired. So tired.
We called and scheduled the final appointment. We told the girls we would have to say goodbye. We all tried to spend time with him in our own ways over those 48 or so remaining hours.
He would always sleep on the floor, right next to where I slept on the bed. I could always reach out and feel him there. The morning of, I woke up early and tried to soak it all in. I sat down on the floor next to him and spent so much time just rubbing his nose and head as I tried to commit every single bump, dip, and curve to memory. And I just cried the entire time.
Our youngest went to sit down next to him and brought all her art supplies. She made him a goodbye card.
Our oldest made an impression of his front paw out of clay.
My eyes constantly checked the clock on the wall. We only had about an hour left with Benson. Now 45 minutes. Now 30 minutes.
It was finally time. We loaded him up and all went to the vet together. We gave the girls the option to say bye beforehand but they both wanted to be in the room with him when he passed.
And I’m so proud and glad they did because Benson was surrounded by those he loved most, being showered with pets and kisses and hugs as he closed his eyes for the last time.
So long, Benson. None of us will ever forget you and I feel so fortunate and lucky that the universe somehow put you in our lives for these last 12 years. Thank you for being an amazing dog. I think all of us are better because of it.
