He was Noah
Remembering a remarkable person who just happened to be a dog
Portland, Ore., United States, February 2, 2026 — Eight years ago, today, my dog, Noah, ate his first taco salad.
Minutes earlier I’d proposed to my then-girlfriend, Andrea. It was an unseasonably warm Friday night. We’d decided to take Noah on a walk to find dinner. I snuck the engagement ring into a pocket as we left then used the excuse of enjoying the nice weather to steer us first to a small bluff overlooking the Willamette River. I asked, Andrea accepted, then we turned to the important part of the night: finding food.
We found it at a taqueria a couple blocks away. We were happy with the burritos we ordered, but we wanted to involve Noah in the celebration. We decided to spoil our floofy friend with a bowl shaped from a tortilla filled with what he might arguably have considered the world’s greatest delicacy: fresh, crunchy lettuce.
Noah’s obsession with lettuce was possibly as deep as our obsession with Noah. In other words, it was limitless. Noah’s love for romaine was well-known among his social media friends and well-wishers, so we made sure to chronicle the occasion with a photo for his fans on social media. There Noah was immortalized blurrily chomping on his lettuce with Andrea’s engagement ring somewhere in the background and a caption reading something like “Noah had his first taco salad tonight!”
That fall, our wedding began with a surprise for our guests: a puppet show featuring hand-made versions of Noah, Andrea, and myself. There are many stories to tell about how those puppets and that show came to be, but I mention the performance now because its plot revolved around the idea that Noah thought that everyone had gathered so he could marry Andrea. It opened with puppet me and puppet Andrea about to exchange our vows when puppet Noah suddenly appeared to protest my obstruction of his and puppet Andrea’s own nuptials. Hijinks ensued — including some involving a lettuce leaf styled from felt — until, finally, puppet Noah relented, puppet Andrea married puppet me, and we all continued as one happy family.
Andrea and I were fiercely protective of Noah’s fierceness. He was a twenty-pound mini poodle with soft, snow-white curls so tight that we joked the ones atop his head looked like uncooked instant ramen. Noah walked with an unmistakable prance that passers-by rarely failed to mention. Andrea and I didn’t love the dainty stereotypes ascribed to poodles — mini or otherwise — and I suspect he would’ve rejected them himself had he been aware of them.
The real Noah came to our wedding, of course. Andrea and I decided not to have him groomed beforehand because we thought growing out his sheep-like hair would make him look wild, furry, and extra soft. Instead, he resembled a 1970s porn star. I wouldn’t have been surprised if his curls concealed a bushy mustache.
Despite the ridiculous outcome, I don’t regret our decision not to have Noah coiffed for the occasion. He wasn’t simply a poodle and he was so much more than just a dog. He was a presence. He was Noah, and we wanted him to appear as fully Noah as possible.
From dating, through engagement, through marriage, and on to parenthood, Noah’s kept our relationship’s time. His tenth birthday coincided with when we’d scheduled Andrea’s baby shower. Without telling any of our guests, we ordered him a dog-friendly birthday cake. That morning, dozens of our loved ones showed up at my in-laws’ house expecting baby galore, but we insisted on starting the day with his cake and a round of serenading a poodle with “Happy Birthday.” Celebrating Noah came first, then came onesies and diaper puns.
Noah used to sleep with Andrea and me in our bed. Every night he’d run up the stairs to our converted attic bedroom, turn a corner, break into a sprint, race across the room, then leap onto the bed. There, he’d nuzzle between us, climb atop our pillows to rest above our heads, or stretch across our bodies. Noah spent much of Andrea’s pregnancy with his head on her belly until, finally, it grew too round for him to find purchase.
Late in that pregnancy we rearranged our bedroom furniture to make room for the baby’s bassinet. Among other things, we rotated our bed 90 degrees. The shift disrupted Noah’s evening sprinting route. He soon stopped his nightly slumbers on our bed and instead started spending more nights in his own nearby on the floor.
On the last day of 2019, about six weeks after Noah’s tenth birthday, Andrea had a checkup with some routine fetal monitoring. The tests picked up some slightly abnormal fluctuations. They weren’t particularly worrying but merited a follow-up visit two days later. In Portland, the first day of 2020 was another unseasonably warm, sunny one. With little to do but wait for Andrea’s appointment the next day and little she felt comfortable doing, we got in the car and aimlessly wandered around the city. Andrea kept Noah on her lap the whole time, a pile of blankets to help him stay comfortable. He didn’t seem to need them, though, and we all savored a day exploring as a trio.
Much later that night, as we got into bed, Noah — unprompted — followed, climbed up onto the bed, and nuzzled himself right between Andrea and me. We hadn’t even enticed Noah up with the squeak of one of his many toy chickens. He just lay between us, soaked up the pets and kisses we showered upon him, and didn’t budge the rest of the night. This was his place.
At the end of Andrea’s follow-up screening the next morning the clinicians suggested we go home, pack our bags, and return to the hospital to get ready for her delivery. We raced back, grabbed our bag, gave Noah some kisses and hugs, and called Andrea’s sister to come over to watch him while we were at the hospital. Everything ultimately turned out well, but Andrea and the baby needed a couple more days’ attention than we’d expected.
After the kid was born my sister-in-law came to see us at the hospital. When she left, we asked her to smuggle out one of the blankets in which we’d swaddled the baby. We were uncertain how Noah would take to our attention being divided when we returned and we’d heard that this was a way we could introduce the baby’s scent to Noah. A few hours after she left, my sister-in-law sent a video of Noah sniffing the blanket than zooming wildly around our living room, instantly dispelling our worry.
Amid the haze that shrouded early parenthood (confusion further intensified as I stole moments to report a news feature about how a disease rapidly spreading around the globe was disrupting social gatherings), I recall few specifics of the blurry first months of the baby’s life. One exception occurred about a week after we’d returned home from the hospital. After a night of imperfect bottle feedings and poorly-executed swaddles, I’d finally stolen away for one of those precious who-knows-what-time-it-is-but-I’ll-take-it naps that accompany early parenthood. Then the sound of Andrea yelling yanked me from my sleep.
“Bill, come quick!” she shouted. “Something amazing is happening!”
I was completely confused what could be so amazing. What could have happened that early in our kid’s life besides the baseline wonder that is a child’s existence? I wanted to stay in bed, but I could tell from Andrea’s voice that I’d be disappointed if I didn’t see what she was witnessing.
I got up and stumbled down to our living room. Andrea sat on the couch glowing with awe and delight. The baby calmly nuzzled her chest. Andrea’s mom, who was visiting for a bit, sat next to them, grinning. Between her and Andrea sat a bunched-up gray fleece blanket. Actually, the blanket didn’t sit. It was moving. A little white mass of curled ramen popped from behind one of the blanket’s folds. Noah’s face remained buried in the rest of the blanket, which now shifted toward the baby as Noah pushed. Then Noah lifted his head, focused on the blanket, quickly lowered his snout again, and pushed it toward Andrea’s lap and over the baby’s tiny feet.
Intent and a bit frenetic, Noah arranged and rearranged the fabric. He was an artist, a craftsman of blanket arranging, and his aim was clear. He needed to cover the baby’s feet, to protect them. Whether for the baby’s sake or his own interests, Noah clearly wanted to hide the baby’s feet the way he hid his favorite toys and treasures and treats in the corners of his bed. He treasured this new member of our family.
We’d had a hunch he would.
We probably shouldn’t have been surprised. Noah treasured us, his family, more than anything. It might even be possible that he treasured us more than crispy romaine lettuce hearts, more than the many pairs of shoes he chewed through over the years, maybe even more than the piles of our things upon which he’d carefully place his food bowls after picking the bowls up from the kitchen floor and running with them to our living room.
Once, Andrea, Noah, and I were driving somewhere together. It was one of the first times Noah had ridden in a car while Andrea was not driving — they’d spent their first months together in New York, where she didn’t own a car — and he was sitting on her lap as I drove. He looked up, saw the passenger-side mirror, and started barking angrily at the “other” dog reflected in it sitting in his mom’s lap.
Noah didn’t readily warm to people, but the ones he did he didn’t just like; he loved so deeply and fiercely that he had to eat every meal right next to something that belonged to them. He cared so deeply about them that he had to viciously warn away his own reflection when he saw it cuddling them. The sight of Noah covering the baby’s feet with a blanket told us clearly that Noah considered the baby part of his pack.
I’d myself been admitted a few years prior (now, a little more than a decade ago). It was after Andrea and Noah had moved back to Portland and a bit after she and I started dating. At the time I rented a house within walking distance of her place, and she often walked him to my house after she’d introduced him to me.
The grocery store where Andrea typically shopped was between her house and mine. On nice days she’d sometimes walk Noah to the store and tie him up outside while she shopped. Once Noah had been to my house, though, he never wanted the grocery store to be his destination. Instead, whenever Andrea headed that direction he’d instead try to lead her past the store and continue to my house. I was honored.
Noah changed my life. Andrea’s. Ours. He defined it really. Our kid’s entire life until last month involved Noah. Frankly, our kid might not exist had it not been for Noah. In darker moments between Andrea and me, there were times when seeing Noah and thinking of the possibility of never seeing him again kept me in the fight. Those times kept me working and trying for us, a fact that seems absolutely ridiculous on the outside but made total sense to me. In brighter moments of our lives, including Noah in our joy was an imperative. He joined us for family vacations on the coast — ask us about the time he chased a leaf down the beach — sat with us for movie nights, and cuddled on Andrea’s lap for long drives.
Noah was undeniably Andrea’s soul mate before we knew one another, and he became just as important to me once we’d met. He was, quite simply, the embodiment of love. He personified (yes, he was undoubtedly a person) truly limitless, though fiercely-protected love. He defined us. Gave shape to our lives. Kept us going in the dark times and amplified the joy of the bright ones.
Noah and I often just enjoyed existing in one another’s presence. Each spring, once the weather settles down, I’m so starved for sunlight that I take pains to do any work I can accomplish outside. Since moving to our current house, this typically involves working from some backyard lounge chairs. Despite the possibility of flies infiltrating the house I always left the back door open because I knew if I did Noah was likely to eventually appear a few minutes after I settled in to work. I’d hear little footsteps in the grass, look up to see him exploring the yard a bit, ignore his occasional attempts to steal lettuce growing in one of our garden beds, then watch him finally make his way toward me.
Part of one of Noah’s hips was removed when he was still a puppy (legend has it that he escaped the vet after the procedure and found his way the mile or so back home, an IV tube still attached). He also had chronic arthritis, so he often had a bit of trouble with his back legs and favored his front legs. As he aged it became ever clearer that his joint pain was starting to bother him, but well into his last years, whenever Noah reached me in the back yard he’d leap or pull-himself up onto the lounge chair beside me and rest as I worked at my laptop or read a document.
By last spring Noah was about fourteen and a half, his arthritis and a number of other more serious ailments worsening as he aged. He slept most afternoons away in the living room. Despite his condition, whenever I went out back to work last Spring, Noah frequently roused, navigated down the back steps, and appeared next to me. Most of the time he even tried to crawl up onto my chair, though he’d finally stopped leaping and would instead begin by putting his front paws on the chair, then allow me to bring him the rest of the way up.
Noah liked having a strategic vantage point. Before his arthritis and other issues caught up with him he’d climb up to the top of the couch at the foot of our living room window, hoist himself up by his front paws, stretch along the top of the back cushions, then alternately survey the street and snooze. Often, we’d pull up to the house, see his face poke through the cushions, then disappear as he leapt off the couch and ran to our front door to wait for us.
He didn’t limit his climbing to couches and lounge chairs. A few years ago our furnace failed during a particularly nasty winter storm, then the power went out. As we waited to get everything back online, Andrea and I moved every pillow and blanket in our house into our living room so we could all cuddle together to keep warm. The next day we turned the pillows into a makeshift fort. Our kid — then a toddler — spent the day playing on it alongside Noah, who climbed to the very top of one stack of pillows, then peered over the rest of the room as if surveying his domain. In many ways that’s exactly what it was.
Much like his mom and me, Noah was fiercely independent for most of his life. He often refused to be picked up. Despite chronic arthritis for most of his life, he almost always vaulted up the steep stairs to our bedroom. Later in his life, though, as Noah started to struggle climbing the stairs himself, he allowed us to pick him up to carry him to our bedroom. Whenever we bent over to get him, he’d lift one front paw slightly then rest on our arm to indicate his readiness. My heart swelled with love every time he did that for me. It also broke a little each time. The gesture underscored the reality of Noah’s declining health.
That reality became clear by fall, 2024, when Noah ended up in the emergency room with complications from what we’d soon learn was canine diabetes. When he returned to the emergency room a couple weeks later — just after his fourteenth birthday — we prepared ourselves for the possibility he wouldn’t survive the week. Fortunately, he would. He would even reach his fifteen birthday — another half decade after that surprise celebration before our baby shower.
That year following Noah’s diagnosis consumed my attention, my energy, my heart. Whenever Noah wasn’t consciously in my thoughts, everything else happening in my life seemed to ultimately lead back to him. Caring for an aging, ill dog was among the most prominent entries in what seemed like an ever-growing list of pressures I was poorly managing. It felt like the most urgent entry on the list. Noah’s needs were my most pressing concerns; I needed to address them before I could ever even think about any other priority.
Suddenly, yet slowly
The unthinkable happened suddenly, yet all too slowly. We knew Noah was aging. We knew the diabetes was getting harder to manage, and we realized that it was only one of the many conditions he suffered. We also knew we loved him deeply, that he was the soul of our family, and that the unthinkable truly was unthinkable. It remains unthinkable, even now that it has happened.
Eight years after Noah’s first taco salad, he won’t be here to celebrate with Andrea and I. When Spring comes, he won’t join me in the backyard when I head out to get some work done. This evening, after our kid gets home from kindergarten and plops his backpack on the living room floor, Noah won’t clatter over with his dinner bowl and rest it on the bag as he eats. He won’t tear romaine leaves to shreds as if snapping some creature’s bones. He won’t walk up to where one of us is sitting, stop, then place all his weight against our leg as a hug. He won’t sigh contentendly as we scratch that perfect spot at the base of his ears, nor will he turn to look at us the moment we stop scratching, silently ordering us to keep going.
We lost Noah in the middle of December. I’m writing this in our kitchen six weeks after he died. Our wedding puppets now stand in the corner of the living room where Noah’s bed was. I sometimes still think the Noah puppet is the real thing. The reality that it’s not breaks my heart every time.
It’s still so weird to be the only one home. Sometimes, when I was home and otherwise alone I’d just barely hear Noah snoring in the corner. As near-imperceptible as the snores may have been, I’d record videos to send to Andrea of Noah lying in his bed, sleeping, just so she could hear that same sound herself. Quiet as it may have been, even the sound of Noah’s slumber filled the room. Today, the room is quiet.
The entire house is quiet.
Not just quiet. Empty.
But my heart is full.
Full of Noah’s memory. Full of love. Full of life.
Noah was life.
Dogtopia: Noah in Repose
This Week’s Detours
No detours, scenery, or souvenirs this edition. Go savor the company of a creature you love.
I’ll be back much sooner than usual with a new edition and many links. If you haven’t already, subscribe below to get that in your inbox.
Aww, Bill. What an incredible eulogy. I'm so glad you all had each other for so long. Hugs.
Bill, this was so beautiful it brought me to tears. What a special dog. We lost our Dexter in June and I still have a hard time talking/thinking about it so I know it took a lot of courage to write this. Lots of love to you and Andrea.