It’s with a very heavy heart that I tell you we had to say goodbye to one of the best friends we’ve ever known this past Monday, our beagle Amstel. Many of you who’ve read my blog regularly since 2016 have seen countless pictures and video evidence of Amstel’s antics and cuteness in those seven years but our history with him stretches back a lot further. It’s going to be difficult to explain how significant he was to us in words but I'm going to try.
Amstel came into our lives in March of 2008, before my wife and I were even married. He was already three months old when we took him home from the breeder. Amstel was the last of his litter to be adopted because, as we discovered later, he was born with an abnormally short sternum (which normally provides protection for the heart), which undoubtedly made hunters shy away from taking the chance on him. Let me tell you, it was their loss.
Although he was the largest puppy the breeder had, he was still so incredibly tiny. My wife picked Amstel out of eight or so other beagles because he followed her around when we were visiting the breeder and he also had a small white dot on the back of his neck that caught her eye. Amstel was a breeze to train and was housebroken in just a few days. The household, very quickly, fell into our perspective roles. I was Amstel’s walker, his chef, and the playmate. My wife was the snuggler, walker, and playmate.
We owned a home when Amstel first came into our lives. He loved the backyard of our small craftsman style bungalow and walks through the neighborhood. Our son, Martese, lived with us for the first few years of Amstel’s life and he quickly became Martese’s “puppy brother”. The seasons and cycles of life continued as the stream of time swept us right along in its current.
Amstel (a.k.a. - puppy boy, stinker, bubs, stink man, the King of Cathedral Hill) joined us through four moves, thousands of miles of walking, car trips across the breadth of America, even a short stints living in Brooklyn and Arizona. As I worked on my novel, Alarm Clock Dawn, and countless short stories and poems Amstel was always by my side, content just to be with his pack. He especially enjoyed it when my wife and I were able to leave our day jobs in 2017–8 for me to write full time. Amstel was finally able to be with his pack 24/7.
His favorite thing to eat in this entire world was chicken. He expected a treat when he came back from every walk. While we were outside walking there was rarely a day that he didn’t get at least one compliment from a stranger. After his last big walk in the evenings there was always shenanigans’ hour. Amstel would do his trademark double bark then proceed to run around like a crazy man and bark at us until he finally settled down to have a good chew, either cod sticks or a cow ear. In his final years he took to stalking delivery drivers for treats. Just one look from him and their hands would disappear into their pockets for a Milk Bone.
Amstel snuggled up close to us in bed, wanting to bury his nose under the covers but after a few hours he’d always move down to the foot of the bed to sleep on his favorite Victoria’s Secret heart blanket. He quickly claimed this soft blanket from my wife and she had to buy a second one to call her own.
While we walked there were a few certain places in the neighborhood where he always got the urge to run. It was always a mystery to us why he did this. He would look at us over his shoulder then rear back on his hind legs and bark with all of his being. After the gigantic bark he wanted to run. When he was young and healthy the runs would last sometimes a block. As he got older and his heart disease progressed the “runs” would consist of around five feet but it was one of his many routines that just had to be satisfied.
Amstel loved freshly fallen snow. Fresh snow excited him to no end and he would rush forward and push his front paws through the snow then bark with excitement. He did this just a few days before he passed, in fact.
Amstel was diagnosed with a heart murmur in 2019 by the University of Minnesota veterinary hospital and the team told us that the condition would progress quickly into full congestive heart failure and gave Amstel around eighteen months to live. We choose not to give Amstel the pharmaceutical drugs the team recommended and try to manage the condition with continued exercise, herbal medication, and healthy food. It worked. We’re convinced that, especially the herbal medication my wife found, extended Amstel’s life tremendously.
We were so lucky to have another, nearly four years with Amstel. Those last four years were packed full of some amazing memories and he was part of nearly all of them. We noticed Amstel wasn’t acting like himself on Sunday. His back legs didn’t seem to be moving normally, he was coughing more than usual, and he seemed listless. We took him to the vet first thing on Monday morning. They examined him, did a blood draw and urine analysis and brought him back into the room with us and his condition very quickly deteriorated.
We’re now feeling a huge void Amstel has left in our lives, letting the passing hours start to heal us, and figuring out what life will be like without him. The things we miss about him are far too vast to list here. I had a dream about him the night after he passed. I opened our condo door and there he was, younger, looking happy, and healthy.
We have so many good memories and pictures to reflect back on. Amstel added such an immense amount of joy to our lives and we were very lucky he chose us to be his pack members. Hug your loved ones (including your pets) extra tight and consciously cherish the time you have with them. As the past few years have taught us all, things can change very quickly.
The YouTube clip below contains a few of our memories from the past fourteen years with our little guy.
Rest in Peace, little buddy. I realize there will never be another one quite like you. Know that you were loved immensely and will be remembered always. We both hope you’re there to greet us when it’s our time to cross over. It sure would be amazing to see your smile again.
All for now. Trust your instincts, invest in you, live boldly, and take chances.
Poetry should move us, it should change us, it should glitch our brains, shift our moods to another frequency. Poetry should evoke feelings of melancholy, whimsy, it should remind us what it feels like to be in love, or cause us to think about something in a completely different way. I view poetry, and all art really, as a temporary and fragile bridge between our world and a more pure and refined one. This is a world we could bring into creation if enough of us believed in it. This book is ephemera, destined to end up forgotten, lingering on some dusty shelf or tucked away in a dark attic. Yet the words, they will live on in memory. I hope these words become a part of you, bubble up into your memory when you least expect them to and make you feel a little more alive.
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