I was journaling a bit today and when I went to look for tags to assign the entry, I scrolled past the tag for Growlithe. Growlithe was the name of my beloved Husky who passed away last year. This is my blog, and I thought it would be nice to just write a bit about him today. Enough time has passed since he left our lives that it seems like a great time to reminisce on the great times we had with him and how great of a companion he was. I hope you enjoy.
Growlithe was 10 years old when he died. He was the first pet my wife and I cared for as a young couple; we adopted him the same week we bought and moved into our first home. Growlithe is the name of a Pokémon, and we decided to name our first dog after it because we both loved Pokémon as kids and the franchise was a decent part of why we were so close to begin with. It’s a little silly, and we mostly called him “Growlie” but the name became him, the silly reference quickly wore off to just be our beloved dog.
Like most (all?) huskies, he was energetic, strong willed, goofy, and sometimes mischievous. Unlike most huskies he was nearly always silent. He wasn’t completely mute, he would make sounds occasionally, but he didn’t howl or bark really ever. But his most significant trait is that he loved being our friend. He was always sad when we left and excited when we came back and he always wanted to just be around us.
In the last couple years of his life he endured one of the biggest challenges of his, and our, life: we invited two kids into our home to eventually be adopted. They were 5 and 6 at the time, and Growlie wasn’t super keen to share our home and attention with them. He tolerated them just fine, and after a couple of disagreements they all came to an understanding of each other, but Growlithe was never super friendly with them. He accepted them into his home, but they were always outsiders to him. That’s sad, but he was an older dog who had spent his whole life in quiet with his two best friends. After the kids moved in his house decidedly less quiet and he rarely got alone time with us anymore. I am proud of his ability to accept them and show them love in his final years, even though he clearly wasn’t thrilled about it all the time.
We miss him, and won’t ever forget the impact he had on our lives. Before he passed, I wrote him a letter telling him how I felt about him, read it to him in a little goodbye ceremony we had with him a day or two before his euthanasia appointment. I won’t share it in full here, but in it I expressed that I believe his final parting gift to us was to help us transition from the “new” family from the kids’ perspective, to their family. We’re continuing to struggle with the challenges of raising children who come from difficult early lives, but saying goodbye to Growlithe will be a foundational moment for me, and I expect the kids will remember it as one as well.
Thank you, friend, for helping us go from a young couple to the loving parents of our children. We’ll see you on the other side.