Remembering Charles Nelson. 2013 (?) - 2023

Saying good bye to a very special dachshund, gone too soon.

My wife, Kaylin, and her dog, Charles, were always a package deal. There were no bones made about this.

Of course, Charles would later become my dog, too, but first we had to get to know each other. And as these things go, as much as I loved him (and fed him and cleaned up after him and took him on walks and all the other stuff), he was always going to be Kaylin’s dog first. There’s an iron law of dogdom—similar I suspect to how it works with step-kids and step-parents—that sort of spells all this out.

Linguistically, you do the little disclaimer dance of “we'll he’s ours, but Kaylin brought him into the marriage…“ but you know you’re not fooling anybody. Charles was Kaylin’s dog. But I loved him. I really did.

He was special.

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From the first time we (Kaylin and I) met in person, back in May of 2020 in the earliest days of COVID times, Charles was always there. He was an indelible part of the fabric of our relationship from Day 1.

When I first laid eyes on Kaylin in the flesh, after a monthlong South Carolina-to-Indiana courtship consisting of texts and videos and working our way up to FaceTime, Charles was at her side, bounding up to meet Joni and me, eager to see if I had brought him anything to eat. (He loved to eat—all the time.)

The pandemic had given me a lot of flexibility. IU went fully online for the Spring 2020 semester only (this being Indiana, the reddest state in the Midwest), which is how I met Kaylin and Charlie in the first place. After I decamped to South Carolina to spend time with family, in mid-March, we met online and started talking.

One thing led to another and by 2021, we were ready to take the next step.

When we had our first courthouse wedding ceremony, in September 2021, Charles stood between Kaylin and me and the judge who married us, like he was our witness. In a way, he was.

Kaylin clerked for the judge, who allowed Charles to attend. He was the only friend or family member at that first wedding. I remember his disapproving little looks. (You just had to know Charles’ personality.) But at the same time I could tell he was more or less okay with us getting married. More than anything, I think he wanted to ensure that his comfort and autonomy wouldn’t be impacted by this big change in mine and Kaylin’s lives.

I assured him they wouldn’t be.

In March of 2022, we moved into the house we bought in the Old Northside neighborhood of Indianapolis. Plenty of room for everyone to stretch their legs. Charles was now living with Joni, whose ear he had once punctured in a fight over a toy (Charles loved his toys), as well as two cats.

From time to time, he tried to help himself to cat grub from the auto-feeder, but he wasn’t really tall enough to make it work.

Charles liked snacks. A lot. Even baked chips, as you can see in this picture.

One time, the four of us (Kaylin, Joni, Charles, and I) were walking down the main drag in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. At the time, we weren’t yet married; Kaylin was finishing up her federal clerkship in Georgia and I was doing my thing here in Indiana, so the Great Smoky Mountains were our halfway point. (For some reason, I feel a need to explain why we were in Gatlinburg.)

And if you’ve ever been to this part of the country, you know it is a massive tourist trap. There’s just a perpetual layer of garbage everywhere.

Anyway, as we trotted down the strip, we heard a man yell out, in a fantastic Southern drawl, “Hey, that dawg has a piece of pizza!”

Sure enough, we looked down at Charles and he was carrying a discarded pizza crust from what had been a huge NY-style slice—one of those big, floppy slices that someone had undoubtedly paid 6 or 7 bucks for.

The mass of crust was roughly 7 or 8 inches long—nearly as long as Chuck—and he was proudly carrying down the street, waiting for the opportune moment to inhale it. (He didn’t so much eat as he inhaled.)

At the end of March 2022, Kaylin and I decided to celebrate our marriage with family. COVID and the timing of our move had necessitated we have a courthouse wedding earlier, but we also wanted to have an actual ceremony. On a snowy, early spring afternoon in Indianapolis, we had our second marriage. (We joke from time to time that the first one didn’t take.)

And of course, Charles was there, too. Tux and all.

Last fall, Charles got a diagnosis from the vet. He had a mucus plug that would more than likely require gall bladder surgery to remove both the blockage and his gall bladder. He also had a longstanding liver condition that he was being medicated for over the years.

As the months went on, he became more and more sluggish. Just not himself at all. Whereas previously, I could always count on Charles to be up for a walk around the neighborhood—he never knew when he might find a dead bird or discarded food to snack on—he started to refuse. His appetite was still great, but he just didn’t want to get out and about. He preferred to lay around on the couch and rest all day. This was concerning to us.

In January 2023, his condition started to deteriorate further. His vet recommended that we go ahead and pursue the surgery, even though it was invasive and difficult to perform on small dogs like Charles. We took him to the emergency vet to see what our options were.

The operation itself seemed to go okay, but there were complications. Charles’ blood pressure kept dropping to dangerously low levels. We went down to see him. The vet tech brought us some canned chicken and a little cardboard platter of Cheez Whiz.

He didn’t even touch it. He barely sniffed it.

We knew something was wrong.

Friday night, January 20, Kaylin got a call from the vet. They had to administer CPR to bring him back. His little heart had stopped. Did we want to come down and see him one last time? They could intubate him and buy some time for us to get down there. How far were we from the hospital? How long would it take us to drive down there to see him?

Kaylin made the right call. We knew we had to let him go.

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There are a ton of sad cliches about the deaths of animals. And many of them are true, which is why they become cliches.

These animals bring something pure out of us that I’m not sure people would get to express otherwise. I don’t know what the metaphysical mechanics are behind it, but it feels true to me. Charles brought a tremendous amount of joy into the lives of many people. Minutes after he passed away, Kaylin’s phone started blowing up with texts and dings and phone calls. For a brief moment, I think I experienced what it would be like to be an Instagram influencer. So many notifications.

Expressions of sadness and sorry and condolences came in from all over. Kaylin could barely talk. She had a rough night. But now we know where we stand.

In moments like this, you wonder whether it was worth it after all. The pain of losing a friend like Charles is supposed to be leavened by the joy these creatures bring. And I suppose that’s more or less true, but saying good bye to these friends is just soul crushing.

The time you get to have with them is great, but it’s hard to think about that after they’re gone. There’s an element of persuasion to it, perhaps even self-deceit; convincing yourself that it was worth it all in the end, that having them, even for just a short time, was better than never having them at all. Is that true? I don’t know.

What I do know is that Charles has been a constant in my life for nearly three years, and it is going to take some getting used to the fact that he’s not around anymore. I can’t imagine what it’s like for Kay. Joni seems to sense that something is off, too. They were friends. The cats…I don’t know if they really noticed at all. I mean, they’re cats.

In time, I know the pain will subside. But for now, it feels like something is missing. Like there’s a giant hole where Charles used to be. He was a good dog. I will miss him.

Rest in Peace, Charles Nelson Cook. We love you.