This post was written by Bugsy’s #1 favorite person, her dad.

It was January 2015 and we weren’t particularly in the market for a dog. One of L’s colleagues who volunteers at the local SPCA convinced us (her) to go meet a large pit bull named Bon Jovi who had been at the pound for almost a year and whom everyone there loved. Bon Jovi was sweet but just too much dog for our office-working, condo-dwelling lives. L convinced me to at least walk around while we were there; I was ready to go by the time we got to the small dog / puppy area where L locked eyes with sweet, scrawny Bugsy.

She had the cutest face and big brown eyes that would just stare into yours. And, when you called her she lowered her head and paced toward you while her entire butt seemed to wag in excitement. Later in life, she would sort of do the same thing with her head, having developed a smarl when one of us came home that showed her inability to contain her excitement. We decided to sleep on it before committing to bring her home, but we both knew she had become our girl.

Bugsy went by Cleopatra at the pound, thus named because of her long neck. Her neck looked so long, in part, because she was near starving. She was picked up in an especially-cold January in a rural part of our central Virginia city, just on the edge of town, weighing only 29 pounds despite being probably two and a half to three years old. When we eventually got her to a healthy weight, she was about 50 lbs.

Bugsy was scared of just about everything when we brought her home – people, any strange noise, and especially children. And, she was vocal, either barking when she was scared or excited (or happy, etc, etc) or making random funny dog noises when wrestling or trying to get us to play. We eventually got her to be comfortable around children and our friends and even pretty comfortable around strangers (but never railroad crossing bells), but the vocalness never left her. 

Because of her anxiety, we were nervous to bring her on our first Airstream trip. But, she seemed to love the travel (or, at least, the togetherness) and all of the time outside. By the end she got to see and smell so much of the world – all 48 states in the continental US, plus Canada, and at least wet her feet in the Rio Grande.

She loved to hike and was great off leash – almost all of the time. She also absolutely loved to fetch and to swim. Despite this, we were shocked to learn from the DNA test that she was 25% Labrador (the remainder boxer (50%) and mutt), in part because of her small size. She also absolutely loved people – her people, that is, both us and her friends. Despite our conviction we would never allow it, she slept on our bed, usually in the crook of Lauren’s leg until morning when she could sense I was starting to wake up; then she would either army-crawl up to snuggle or scratch at the covers to be let underneath. She was just the sweetest girl.

We’ve just been trying to focus on the fact that she died doing what she loved, collapsing on the beach after retrieving her favorite toy one last time. She tried to hang on, but didn’t survive the sprint to the vet.

Anyway, some happier times for her and us…