(Originally posted on Facebook - 8/22/22)
About 11 years ago (early 2011), Ellen approached me about getting a dog for JJ and her to run with. I immediately thought of family friends who had dogs and seemed to constantly be training their pets, doing long daily walks, cleaning up after them and getting up in the middle of the night for bathroom breaks (regardless of the weather). I told Ellen I wasn’t a fan of being a dog parent, but if she and JJ would be responsible for 100% of its care, I wouldn’t stand in the way. So Ellen and JJ went looking for a dog... seeking out good running companion traits... and eventually found a cute little border collie mix picked from a group of rescued puppies out of Tennessee. She had a white head, pink speckled nose and brindle markings on her body. I think we called her Peanut for a little while but eventually named her Roxy.
When we first brought Roxy home there were suddenly two huge issues. First of all, unbeknownst to us, she was in extremely poor health and we spent a significant amount of time and money just keeping her alive the first two or three months. Secondly, for reasons we've never been able to figure out, our son Koby has always had a serious dog phobia. So when Ellen and JJ selected Roxy it was in part because she seemed calmer and more “laid back” then the other puppies in her litter. Ellen thought that was her personality and it might be easier to get Koby acclimated to us having a dog if she was less lively than a typical pup. Unfortunately, we soon learned that Roxy was more sedate because she was deathly ill and as soon as we were able to nurse her back to health, she was just as rambunctious as any typical border collie. So no matter what methods we tried, Koby’s anxieties with dogs intensified as we broke Roxy into our daily home life and they didn't improve for years to come.
On top of that there were other typical new dog issues with bathroom training, dealing with our cats (who weren’t big Roxy fans) and household items getting chewed up. It was pretty chaotic being new dog owners for about a year at our place. We thought many times about giving her up for adoption with another family. But ultimately, we had concerns about her ending up in a pound and we felt committed to making our family’s dog situation work.
I’m glad we did.
Ellen and JJ did eventually begin running with Roxy in the trails behind our house and she proved to be a great companion. She could run five miles or more, staying close by and easily keep up with her running buddies. I wasn’t running at the time, but I was doing a lot of mountain biking. I discovered that Roxy could actually keep up with me on mountain bike rides too. I started to enjoy bombing down the fire roads and single-track trails in Loch Raven with my border collie running right in tow.
Over time, even though I had sworn away from it at the start, I began to help with Roxy’s day to day care and grew to appreciate having a family dog. She would get so excited when you fed her or took her for a walk or really did anything just to engage with her. It was hard not to appreciate her enthusiasm. I learned that dogs actually smile when they’re excited about something. (For some reason I didn’t realize this until I had my own dog) and that made her enthusiasm all the more infectious. She LOVED to take rides in cars and trucks. She LOVED when our cleaning lady Laura would come over. She LOVED visiting my parents. She LOVED it when any family member or girlfriend would come home and she could hear the garage door opening and closing as they came in. She LOVED it when musicians would visit and play at our house with me. She LOVED going to our bedroom every night and sleeping with Ellen and me. In general, Roxy just loved doing STUFF… and stuff was doing literally ANYTHING with her family that didn’t involve sitting idly and staring at a computer for hours at a time.
As I grew more comfortable with Roxy, I was eventually diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. In addition to diet and exercise recommendations, my doctor advised me to take more frequent walks. So in 2018 I started taking daily hikes to the lake behind our house with Roxy. It was therapeutic and Roxy loved it. I felt like we had always made efforts to get her out as much as we could, but now I was religious about it. Day in, day out, Roxy and I did our little 1.5 mile loop by the lake, usually in the late afternoon, but sometimes late at night using moonlight to see the trail. It felt like we owned that path. Over the past couple years I’ve taken countless pictures and videos of Roxy documenting the different scenery back there as the seasons change.
Roxy even helped me with music. During the pandemic I made a lot of remote videos to help satiate my desire to make music with friends. Instead of having everyone play in place at the same time, I filmed people playing individually with click tracks and then I’d combine them into multi panel videos and make it appear as if we were all playing together. No surprise, half a dozen of those clips have guest appearances from my favorite canine.
My parents were also big Roxy fans. They live about 10 miles down the road and always seemed to enjoy it when Roxy would come over for visits. My mom would keep dog treats at their house and always made it a point to feed Roxy when she showed up. As my mom began to struggle with a heart condition in the months before her passing, I would bring Roxy over for visits and I think the dog treat feeding ritual helped Mom feel a little better as her health began to fail.
Roxy’s own health began to fail her earlier this year. She was diagnosed with some form of dog lymphoma in June. She still displayed the same enthusiasm and doggy smile when you would do STUFF, even if she had thrown up minutes before and was obviously feeling sick. She was a doggy smilin trooper and would do everything in her power to join me on our daily walks through Loch Raven. But as the cancer got worse, it ultimately made everything in her daily life more difficult and painful and we finally had to put her down today.
I’m gonna miss Roxy like crazy. We’ve recently lost both our last cat (Pikachu) and Roxy and we’re probably gonna be without pets for a while at this stage in our lives. But if we decide to get another pet in a couple years. I’m probably gonna push for a dog. I’m a dog person now.
RIP sweet girly
Roxy Bonta
3/2/11 – 8/22/22
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