We are overwhelmed with sadness this morning to share the sudden departure of our wonderful, lovable, dopey, sweet, ten-year-old Biscuit, who passed away last night. His last day was much like any normal day, spent at our feet. His health deteriorated rapidly in the late evening and he passed in the early hours of September 4, 2011. We are thankful that he was happy and pain-free right up until the end and that we were able to be there with him when he left us.
We’ll always remember the things that made him so great, or at least just made us laugh:
- Wildly bicycling his legs in the air
- Doing his bunny impression or making funny upside down dog faces
- Misjudging where he lay down and ending up with his face smushed against the couch or legs propped up on a suitcase
- How he’d just tolerate Sugar cuddling with him
- Wriggling his head under the covers on weekend mornings and waiting for minutes just to get a pat on the head…and sometimes waking us up by sneezing on us or putting his cold nose on us
- Going to ultimate frisbee tournaments with mommy and hanging out on the sidelines all day together
- Sneaking up behind guests and putting his head in their crotch…and staying there
- How Sugar would run underneath him until she got too big and then she’d do it anyway
- Laying the worst silent but deadly farts. They were fishy.
- Turning his head to watch us as he ate and having food fall out of his mouth
- Lying down in the street during a walk when he didn’t feel like going anymore, or getting his leash trapped behind his front leg and holding it up awkwardly until his leash popped free, then walking as though nothing had happened
- The time he ran outside to pee and found himself in 3 inches of standing water and just looked around in a panic before gingerly picking his way out
- Tricking him into jogging on our walks and playing Red Light Green Light because he would stop if he thought we were jogging, but he would keep going if he didn’t look back at us and see us jogging
- Throwing a Frisbee or stick for him to fetch, and him just looking at us with a smile, as if to say “that was neat! Do that again!”
- How he was so passive that at the dog park, not only would other dogs hump him but they’d often hump him right in the face…except that one time when he was humping another dog, and it happened so rarely that mommy actually cheered him on
- How he hated water, even though he was a retriever
- The time daddy let him off leash to chase ducks, and he followed them down a hill and right into the water, and how he came back over the hill soaked, sad, and duckless
- When he really had to pee, how he’d come sprinting around the corner and would hit the screen door so hard he’d bend it and knock it off its hinges and drag it halfway into the yard…and how he’d then stop and awkwardly move his head around, as if to say, “Hey…I am trapped…under a force field…”
- The time it looked like there was blood in his poop, but it turned out that he had just eaten a red video game controller
- How we thought he was so smart that he freed himself from a locked bathroom…when it turned out he was just stubborn enough to keep throwing himself against the door until the latch popped open
- Racing madly around the house with a crazed look in his eyes, chasing Sugar or being chased
- How he’d get too excited and try to hump Sugar, who’d just lie down and ignore him, but he’d keep humping away at the air a foot above her
- The way he could tell when we were really sad, and how he'd put his head next to us, but not pushy, and let us pet him until we felt better
- Dancing in the living room with his mommy
- The voice we imagined he’d have if he could talk: slow and dopey but happy
- Freeing sugar from the gate and then getting stuck behind it himself
- Writing letters in Biscuit’s voice
- Going to the dog park to play w/people – when dogs came up to sniff him, he’d jerk away, as if to say, “whoa, whoa, personal space, buddy!” …and then hiding under the bench like an ostrich, where if he couldn’t see the other dogs they couldn’t see him
- Chasing his own back leg until he caught it and then hopping around on three legs until he fell down and lay there gnawing on his own leg
- All the stories that mommy told her coworkers about him being passive, causing them to nickname him “Siscuit”
- How he never really learned any commands, other than “sit” and “Sugar, come”
- Lying underneath daddy’s desk in the winter and being a furry foot warmer
- The March Madness brackets he and Sugar would enter based on mascot names…and the year they picked 3 of the Final Four teams and mommy and daddy only picked one on their “real” bracket
- Getting stuck in a confined space and not walking backwards, but just plowing forwards
- Forgetting how to use the doggy door to come in and looking all excited when we showed him the magical new entrance (same doggy door)
- How he hated having his ears touched, so when mommy gave him haircuts she’d have to cut other hair and then sneak attack his ears
- When you found the good spot for scratching and his back leg would twitch
- Spooning with mommy or daddy on the carpet
- Coming to work with his daddy and then spending all day under someone else’s desk, or the day he lay down in the central hallway of the office in front of the drink fridge so that virtually anyone who had to go anywhere would stop and pet him
- The $75 dog bed that he never slept in once, but tore up until he could wrap his legs around it and furiously hump it
- Dressing him up as a biker dog or cowboy for Halloween (Daddy drew the line at a tutu, though he did look great in Sugar’s Dorothy costume)
- When grandma and grandpa came to stay and they were above our room, and he got up in the middle of the night to investigate the strange noise, and barked (first time ever, and one of only two or three times his whole life)…and jumped because his own barking scared himself
- How we gave him a doggy IQ test by throwing a blanket over his head to see how long it would take him to get out from under it…and how he just lay down and took a nap instead
- That he never wanted to be on the couch or the bed because he didn’t understand why the ground was smushy there
- How you could trick him into coming inside by pretending to have something in our hand and just being really excited about it…and how once he got inside he would forget what he came in for
- Putting his head on our laptop keyboards or under our mousing hands just to get us to pet him
- The way he converted both our moms, who are still scared of big dogs, into Biscuit-lovers; Gillian’s mom: “He is the best dog I’ve ever known.”
- How everyone who met him loved him, and how people at the dog park would tell us, “I think your dog really likes me!” not knowing that he “really liked” everyone
- How he started our family
He wasn’t a kisser, but he’d stay still all day for hugs. He wasn’t the brightest dog, but he definitely was one of the sweetest. He found his forever home with us. We loved him very much.
Biscuit, people always said you weren’t the smartest, but in the end you understood that the only thing that matters is the love you give and the love you get, and you gave more love and asked for less in return than anyone. Bye, buddy. We’ll miss you.
