Today I lost my best buddy, my furry sidekick, the freakbeast, Dunkin. As I sit here and write this the room is too quiet, since Dunkin isn’t in here snoring, or chewing on his foot, or just breathing heavy. He wasn’t much of a barker, but I alway knew when he was close by. Now the silence is deafening. 

He had been a little gimpy after six days in the van driving cross-country, but who wouldn’t be. The vet checked him out and we hoped it was just a pinched nerve or a slipped disk. This first week on some pills he seemed to be doing better. By the end of the second week he had lost the ability to use his right hind leg. He went to a specialist and was going to have surgery for a slipped disk. Unfortunately the MRI showed that it wasn’t a slipped disk, rather it was an inoperable tumor on his spinal cord. Since he could no longer even stand up, it was his time. When they wheeled him into the room for me to say “good bye” he gave me a big tail wag, then started snoring. I came back for him like I promised, and stayed with him until the end. He had toughed it out and gave me every day he had. His last days were at my parents house, so there was plenty of hands to give Dunkin all the loving he was looking for.

Looking back over the almost two and a half years we were together brings back so many memories. Come along as I wonder down memory lane… 

It started in late May 2017, my buddy Adam sent me some pictures of Dunkin saying he was my perfect dog. Adam volunteers at the Seattle Humane Society and tries to find all of his friends dogs. Dunkin was a transfer, so he had spent time somewhere else without finding a home. Since if you are reading this you knew him or have seen the pictures, he was a unique specimen. I would later learn through a DNA test that he was. The first day I resisted, while I had grown up with dogs, and missed having one around, I wasn’t sure it was the time to get one. The next day it took only a few more pictures, and some mild prodding and was headed over to meet Dunkin. We became fast friends, after a few minutes in the play area he did his happy bouncing thing, which was latter named “freakbeasting.” Pretty much take equal parts a happy dog, a boxing boxer (dog), and a kid in a mosh pit, you get freakbeasting. Later on I would be greeted by this whenever I got home for work, or was gone for more than a few hours. Unfortunately it was too late in the day that Thursday for me to do the paperwork and take him home with me. I did put a deposit to hold Dunkin for me and promised to be back the next day.

I did come back the next day after work and collected Dunkin. He was such a sweetheart that he was dressed up with a bowtie when he left the shelter. This being Dunkin we didn’t go home from there. We jumped into the loaded Touratech-USA Mercedes Sprinter van and went up into the Cascade mountains to go camping. That is where he met his first dog friend since getting out of prison, Riot. Riot is my buddy Iain’s dog, a malinois and boarder collie mix. Dunkin is Riot’s polar opposite in every way, outside of a predisposition to be a dick, so they became best friends. We camped over that three day weekend, and Dunkin loved the whole deal, people and a dog to hangout with, and laying on my sleeping bag in the tent at night.

Back in the real world it was a little bit tougher. While Dunkin was super well behaved and wanted nothing more than to stay by my side forever, there were times that I couldn’t have him with me. It took a few months to get Dunkin to trust that I would be back when I left, be we  worked it out. 

Dunkin made me a better person, he anchored me and made me less stressed. We road tripped in Washington thousands of miles. We camped together, first in a tent, then in the van. He hung out with me at motorcycle and scooter events, and won everyone over with his goofy charm. Most weekends he would lie in the bushes outside of my garage while I worked on stuff, occasionally wandering in to get some pets and check on me. He rode shotgun all the way from Washington to New Hampshire. He didn’t really care what we were doing as long it we were doing it together.

I’m going to miss hearing all of his weird noises, and his sad “yarp” bark when I wasn’t around. I’m going to miss having him climb onto the top of my couch cushions, and then lay partly on me while I laid on the couch too. I’m going to miss all the dental stick crumbs he would leave on the bed, and having him fall asleep on the pillow next to me. I’ll miss his freakbeasting when I would get home, the bouncing, jumping, spinning dance that he did when he was excited. He knew when I was stressed and knew that he could make it better, and he was right.

I miss my buddy.

Godspeed Dunkin, I’ll see you later bud.     

More pictures of Dunkin and his adventures can be found on his instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dunkin_the_freak_beast/

Dunkin the Freakbeast
2012 – Friday Oct 25th 2019