1/1/2012 – 7/17/2026
Leela died on Friday at the impressively old age of fourteen and a half. We’ve been trying to prepare ourselves for years, but apparently that doesn’t work. The loss is sharp and deep, and right now our house feels empty.
We adopted Leela in the Bay Area in the summer of 2013. (Yes, we’re going all the way back.) It had been a couple of years since my husky Lucy died, and she was still visiting me in dreams, but we decided we were ready to have another dog in our lives.
On Petfinder, I found “Porter,” a one-and-a-half-year-old malamute/boxer mix. What did that even look like? In her profile pic, she had adorable floppy ears, and she was smiling directly at the camera, her tongue hanging out. She was kind of making this face:
She was 75 pounds, had been rescued by the Norcal Sled Dog Rescue, and they had a pet store adoption event that weekend where we could meet her.
We drove to a shopping center in the East Bay, walked past husky after malamute after husky, all looking fresh from the Iditarod. Then there was this Porter character. Striped like a tiger, with long shiny fur that was tan, silver, reddish brown, and black, with white on her muzzle and chest just like a boxer. Those ears.
She stood up to meet us and she was so tall I could pet her without leaning over. Her fur was weirdly soft, and she had a big bushy tail that swished like a feather duster. She wasn’t needy, but she was happy to let us pet her and even walk her around the block. Her walk was kind of a strut, and her ears bounced adorably. She had long, silvery fur on the backs of her legs that looked like Western fringe.
Karen wasn’t sure. The dog was bigger than she expected, and she worried she wouldn’t be able to control her. But she admitted that she was very pretty.
A volunteer told us Porter was from Truckee and her mother was a malamute who’d been rescued pregnant. Someone had taken good care of Porter, but they had to give her up. They wrote that she was sweet-tempered and energetic, and she was “vocal” at meal times. And she had a tendency to knock little kids down.
We knew no little kids—at least none we minded getting knocked down—so we took her home and thought about new names for her.
The Rescue people sent us this unbearably cute picture of her in her puppyhood.
After this first walk, Karen realized she could handle the dog just fine.
We wondered what to name her. I’d been listening to Alan Watts lectures about Hinduism and lila, “divine play,” the concept that the universe is just God having some fun. Also, there was that bad-ass pilot Leela from Futurama.
At the dog park, Leela lived up to her new name.
She stirred up the whole pack in huge spirals that gradually shrank until she suddenly went to ground and let one of her friends tackle on her. She didn’t mind playing the wounded deer, presenting her neck to dogs so they could chomp on it and she could wrestle them on her back.
She once jumped completely over another dog while they were both in a full sprint next to each other.
She loved to wrestle, and right away she became good buddies with Jake.
She could throw a punch. Until Leela, I didn’t know that’s why boxers were called boxers. Her opening play move was often to just smack a dog in the face with a front paw. She often greeted Karen with a big smile and a bounding double-paw punch right to the gut.
She had hilarious timing with a squeaky toy, would ignore one for weeks until we forgot all about it, and suddenly we’d hear a furious squawking from the other room.
She snuggled, for brief periods.
She gave Lucy a break from visiting me in my dreams.
She was a lady, and she never had accidents in the house. She wouldn’t poop in our yard, and on our walks, she’d wait until we’d gotten as far from the house as we were going to get before she pooped.
She loved avocado and yogurt, and blueberries if you split them open first.
She could be majestic and silly at the same time.
She was a great road trip dog. On our big Utah adventure in 2013, we used all of Karen’s points and spent a night at the Ritz in Deer Valley. The Christmas rush hadn’t started, so they didn’t care that Leela was twice their weight limit. She walked into that lobby, looked around, and lay down in front of the fireplace like she was finally in surroundings suitable to her station.
She even took to the slopes.
Later on that trip, she endured two hours bumping along unpaved Bureau of Land Management roads so we could hike around some of Utah’s weirdest land formations.
She got to take in Zion National Park from the car.
She slept with us in a caboose halfway between LA and Portland.
She saw Crater Lake, Bryce Canyon, the Alvord Desert.
She came with us to Sun Valley, Idaho, in summer and winter.
She loved the beach, though she did not like to swim. If she went in too deep and her legs left the ground, she made a quick, wide-eyed u-turn until she touched sand.
She visited California beaches and the Oregon coast many, many times.
Despite her reputation for knocking down children, she was kind and gentle to our niece and nephews.
She loved all humans, especially mail carriers and delivery drivers, who often stopped just to give her treats.
She loved most dogs
and would play
however they wanted.
But she would not tolerate airedales (weird faces?) or corgis (where rest of legs?).
OK, maybe she didn’t love most dogs. She could be a bit of sociopath. On walks, she loved to stare at dogs across the street, goading them into freaking out and barking at her. She might wag her tail at an approaching dog, suggesting she wanted to be their friend, only to pounce as soon as they got close.
On our brief attempts to turn her into a sidewalk cafe dog, she would chill under the table, lulling us into a fall sense of security while she bided her time. When a dog walked past, she’d pounce as soon as they got close.
In Portland, there’s a dog park a block from our house. After going nearly every day for many months, Leela decided that her territory extended to the dog park, and she vetted every new dog.
When a dog came in hot, Leela ran over and put her paw on the dog’s shoulder. She seemed to explain the rules to him, and he nodded and trotted away. Eventually a dog showed up that didn’t respect Leela’s authority, and there was mild violence.
Our dog park era was over.
Over a couple years, Leela got banned from every boarding place and doggy daycare we tried. We don’t like to think about it. Once we were out of town, and they kept her in solitary confinement until we came back.
For a while, her beloved dog walker Aspen would take care of her while we were out of town.
Leela had dog friends, but she was choosy about them.
Her pal Cooper stayed with us sometimes.
Before her dog park exile, she bonded with Farley and Noki, who became her twice-a-week playmates. Noki’s people got another dog, Nonni, and the four of them formed a part-time pack.
Farley was too mature for some games.
After a couple of years, Noki and Nonni moved away, but Farley and Leela kept hanging out twice a week for the rest of her life.
We relied on Claire, Farley’s person, to take care of Leela when we traveled, and we took Farley whenever Claire traveled. (Alas, we could never vacation together.) In the last few years, Leela and Farley didn’t do much playing. They just said hello and lounged around next to each other.
She turned me into her servant, a role I was honored to play. In mid-life she convinced us—or just me—to start feeding her lunch. In her later years, lunch moved from 12:00 to 11:00, dinner from 5:00 to 4:00. To 3:45. Dinner was always preceded by barking, and then squeaking as her vocal chords got old.
She was always up for anything, but she also loved to go to bed every night, the earlier the better. Sometimes she’d stand at the foot of the stairs and look at us, look upstairs, and look at us again.
Sometimes she let me hold her paw.
She had a comfortable bed, but she preferred the cool floor in the doorway. No one could leave without her knowing about it.
She woke up early every morning and gave me the gift of quiet walks just before sunrise.
She either had supernatural hearing or a very specific form of ESP that told her when an avocado was being cut open in the kitchen, even when she was outside on the porch.
She loved to lay on the porch and watch the world go by, maybe take a nap, or just keep an eye out for any corgis or airedales.
Two years ago, she started to have trouble with her hind legs. Though she didn’t like swimming, Leela stoically endured hydrotherapy sessions every Saturday after that.
She disagreed with the treatment, but she didn’t blame Sondra or Kristin, her therapists. And she did get a treat for every lap she completed.
Even in old age, even with unsteady legs, she’d often bark at me until I chased her around the backyard. If I didn’t play, she’d dig a hole just to get a rise out of me.
She let me hug her like it was our last hug multiple times a day for the last couple of years.
She loved Karen so much. Hence the gut punches and (brief) snuggles.
She was happiest when the three of us were together.
Our hearts are broken, but they’re so full of love for this wonderful being.
We love you, Leela. I hope, in the spirit of lila, that we meet again. If, in that life, I’m your dog, and you’re my person, I hope I give you a fraction of the joy you gave us.
JEREMY R. RESNICK 