For as many times I carried her up and down the stairs over the last year, I didn’t clock the very last one, even though I knew it was her very last morning. I just assumed that her separation anxiety would compel me to carry her one last time for a short sojurn up the stairs, looking for scissors, or making sure the kids brushed their teeth, or retrieving socks.

I’m mad at myself for not savoring that last sojurn with Maeby in arms. But over the last month, I’d made a habit of kissing her snout with every step. She let me. Sometimes, she even proffered that snout of hers to make sure I was getting it all.

This morning we watched videos of times where a young and spry Maeby could leap so seamlessly from floor to bed. She used to snuggle me prolifically while I read until, without warning, she’d dramatically rise leap from the bed whenever she overheated. But if she wasn’t hot, she’d snuggle me for hours. She snuggled me through medical procedures and sicknesses and miscarriages. Floof and body heat and slow blinks and whiskers.

When the vet asked me this morning what Maeby loved, I said, “Well, she used to love snuggling on the bed.” More recently, she preferred predictable surfaces, ones that didn’t bounce under her weight or jostle her slipped disc out of position. So I joined her on the floor

last night and tried to commit the feel of her floof under my fingertips to memory. I traced her face. Removed her eye crust. Scratched behind the ear. Gently rubbed detritus of some form or another from her whiskers. Kissed her snout again. Cried over her. Cried next to her. Cried on her. Cried in her.

She was so floofy. That’s why we got her. I pointed to her in the corner kennel at a dog rescue in Long Island, and Jeremy asked me in surprise, “That *floof?” And I replied confidently, “*That* floof.”

And the joke around these parts is that she wasn’t a very good dog but she was always a sweet one. She was a productive trash surfer. She was an anxious barker. She was, at times, passive aggressive with her bowel movements. But she was also a snuggler, a worrier, a watchdog, and she was good to my babies. She sometimes got terrible haircuts that really gave us a good laugh.

She made me a mother. So many of my new friends and acquaintainces don’t remember me in the throes of IVF, but those of you who knew me then know how deeply Maeby rescued me from suffocating childlessness. She gave me a place to put my care.

My care is still there, buried in that floof. It slid down my cheeks and into her fur. It’s still there.

She got to eat *so many* chocolate chip cookies this morning. And a slice of ham. And flank steak. And she fell asleep forever licking a spoonful of peanutbutter.

Maybe if you’re still here, reading a memorial for a pet that wasn’t yours, it’s because you too once had an imperfect dog that you also cried into. And you remember this moment and this feeling and this crushing sadness, but also you remember your imperfect dog with expansive and soul-crushing gratitude.

Oh my beloved Maeby girl. Thank you for all of it.