Goodbye, Ellie.

I once used a newborn baby photoshoot to get pictures of me and Ellie in Avalanche jerseys.

NOTE: I saw Dater’s post last night and held off on posting this until today. You all come here to read about the Avalanche, something that should be a distraction from the everyday issues we all deal with. I apologize for another non-Avs heavy piece.

Ok. This is my fourth pass at this. The first sucked. The second was way too long and rambled on. The third didn’t do justice to the subject matter and the depth of emotions I am feeling.

So here I am. Trying to encompass the emotions of the saddest few days of my life for strangers who are used to reading my thoughts on Cale Makar and Nathan MacKinnon. This isn’t about them. It’s about my beloved dog and best friend who we said goodbye to Friday morning.

That’s your warning. If you only want the Avalanche. Stop now.

If you’ve experienced the soul-crushing sorrow our family have endured the last few days and it’s too tough to continue reading. Stop now.

But this is my cathartic release to express the pain that I’ve felt for the last 96 hours or so. If you would indulge me in stepping away from the page’s usual subject matter and talk about my beloved Ellie for just one piece, it would mean a lot to me.

Ellie has been my best friend since the moment I picked her up from a farm in the hills of the Berkshires in March 2013. A supposed birthday gift for my then-girlfriend/now-wife, Ellie immediately shunned her new mom, choosing to run away from an oncoming hug to hide under the home’s deck. I persuaded the little brown nugget out into the sunlight and my embrace and we never looked back.

That puppy dog came everywhere with me. The office, sporting events, social gatherings… everywhere. 

Ellie even came with us as we took a walk around Mascoma Lake in Enfield, New Hampshire, one April afternoon a few weeks after her arrival. As I dropped to one knee to propose, we had to hurry both the question and answer as Ellie’s sudden affinity for eating pine cones had developed at that very moment.

Ellie’s passion for eating things was not reserved for pine cones during proposals, either. She loved eating rocks, socks, magazines, Kindles, books, couch cushions, her own bed, all her toys and, oddly enough, the stairs. We were in over our heads as well as head over heels in love with this imperfect pooch.

She could do no wrong. We probably weren’t the best dog parents to start. She got away with a ton at the beginning of her time with us. And when she made a mistake, we would usually blame the other puppy parent for allowing such bad habits to exist, rather than Ellie for making the bad choice.

She was the favorite for both of us. Regardless of our new status as the other’s fiance, Ellie was always No. 1.

When I once excitedly cheered a Patriots’ comeback win in the final seconds of a game against the Browns, my loud cheer scared her. Ellie had a bump on the top of her head as a puppy that we called her fin. In her startled state, she jumped up from my lap where she was stationed and caught the corner of my eye right on the bone with that fin. Holy shit was that painful. And while I writhed around on the floor in pain yelling a certain four-lettered word that rhymes with ‘duck,’ my now-wife Candice was trying to calm Ellie down, ignoring her fiancé rolling around the living room floor with his face in his hands.

Ellie’s fear was more important than my pain. 

Her inability to remain calm hardly changed over the years. She loved everything and everyone so much. She could hardly contain herself when she saw someone she knew or even when she met someone new that she insisted on introducing herself to. That usually consisted of jumping up with both paws into their abdomen or putting their wrist in her mouth and lightly chewing as she guided them around as if they were the one on a leash.

That behavior was what caused her to be left off the guest list for our wedding in 2015. Can you imagine that? I wasn’t even allowed to have my first choice for best man/doggo at the ceremony?! So unfair. Her absence from the day’s festivities led to the wedding hashtag #WheresEllie to become our official wedding calling card that several people have referenced via texts and messages in the last few days.

As time moved on and our family grew, Ellie didn’t take a backseat to either of our kids. Instead, Ellie made room for them.

The days after bringing Blake home resulted in countless visits by Ellie to his swinging chair or his blankie during tummy time to test which toy he would like best. She settled on her stuffed beaver and would bring it to him frequently. We would leave the room to come back and find Ellie sitting in front of her sleeping baby brother while a gross, wet and partially decapitated beaver lay across his lap.

During the last few days, we’ve been telling the kids stories about Ellie’s life, choosing to focus on the fun rather than the finale. In those story sessions, I was reminded of one that I had forgotten, one that told me that Ellie and her first sibling were forever connected. During one of those first-week changing sessions, we noticed that his belly-button umbilical cord remnant was gone. After a quick and fruitless search of the changing table, we heard the sound of smacking lips… turning around, we saw the last chew before a big gulp. Ellie literally couldn’t get enough of her brother.

We welcomed a little girl two years later and Ellie’s play time with her brother was cut down as he became as infatuated with his baby sister as Ellie had been with him upon his arrival. She moved from the center of the play circle to the outside, but often joined in from the fringe of the party, always coming in with a smile and a wet and stinky dog smooch.

Her place on our bed was always secure. From the night we brought her home and couldn’t take the frightened cries from her crate during her first night in a new home, until last Thursday when she jumped off after a few minutes to get more comfortable on the floor next to us.

We took her back to Mascoma Lake — her favorite place in the whole world — last Friday to jump off our friends’ dock and go swimming one more time. She was so happy that day back in the place where she spent so much time as a puppy. It was the one thing we said we wanted to do most when we got the dreaded diagnosis this spring.

Bone cancer. In her skull.

There were options to treat it, but none were realistic to stop it completely or give us much more time. Ellie was already an old lady, having gone gray when she was only four. She was a chocolate lab, but she hadn’t been truly brown in such a long time, I genuinely can’t remember a time before the white hairs appeared on her mouth, chest and then her feet. 

We opted to slow it with chemo, hoping to give her the most time without giving her too many moments of pain.

After several months of treatment, she let us know that she was ready. It felt like it was as soon as she walked out of the waves that day at Mascoma. It was as if she came home that night, climbed in her chair in the living room and was finally at peace with the conclusion of her story. 

Ellie’s tumor had spread to her jaw in the last month or so, making it hard to eat. We gave her pain medication, but it had to be with food. So the circle of meds and eating were affected greatly by the pain. She stopped eating this week, making the pain of her mouth more prominent, while also making her hungry and thirsty. It was too much for her and it was too much for us, so we made the decision on Wednesday to have someone come to the house to help us send Ellie over the Rainbow Bridge.

We woke up Friday morning at 5 a.m. and sat with her on the floor of our bedroom, petting her and reminding her what a good girl she was. The kids joined at 6 a.m. and we all sat there talking to our sweet girl, telling her how much we loved her and how it was okay to go, that she didn’t need to protect us anymore. My parents — who spent a year living with and taking care of Ellie while we stayed with them before finding our new home — came and said their tearful goodbyes to their ‘granddog’ who had won their hearts over tenfold during her time on Earth. 

Our kids said their goodbyes and left for a fun day with their grandparents meant to distract them from the crippling loss that would happen at home. We would say our goodbyes soon thereafter during one of the worst, but most peaceful experiences of my life.

In the moment she slipped away from us, she was released from her pain and her face eased. The tension she had been holding, the pain she had been suffering was gone forever and she passed looking like the beautiful girl we had known for so many years.

I loved that small brown dog more than I ever thought I could love anything. Ellie’s presence in my life taught me how much capacity I had for love. I am a better father to my human babies because of what she opened in me as her dog dad and best friend.

Ellie’s physical pain left her at 11:35 a.m. on Friday morning, but has transferred to us emotionally. We are broken. We are so filled with sadness and sorrow. Despite two kids still running around and playing at max volume, our house is empty and lonely.

However, we know that the massive void in our hearts and home is only a fraction of the size of love and memories that our beloved Ellie gave us for 11-plus years. 

I will end this by saying the same thing I said to Ellie every day when I left the house without her:

“Goodbye Ellie. I love you. You’re my best friend.” 

SECOND NOTE: excuse any typos or poorly constructed sentences… it’s hard as shit to write through blurred vision caused by tears.