She was a good dog—not in all the conventional ways (she never took to other dogs, couldn’t be kept from jumping for joy all over those she loved—i.e., everyone—wouldn’t pass a single item on the Canine Good Citizen’s test, and was known to take a petulant poop on the new carpet when left alone for what she deemed too long) but—in all the ways that mattered. Nothing is more flattering than the enthusiastic greeting of a dog to whom you are the whole world. She had a love incommensurate with her compact frame. She was the nearly-perfect reading, walking, paddleboarding, and gardening companion. Her antics elicited infectious laughter and affection. She was a perpetual puppy. In the end, her fourteen-year-old heart couldn’t keep up with her spirit’s indomitable youth. Mom and Dad brought her to the vet for the last time on September 7.
“The only thing dogs do wrong is they don’t live long enough” (Rob Tuncks, Muster Dogs, E3, 41:27). Never mind that the last fourteen years have brought me more places and experiences than I ever would have imagined when we took her home at the beginning of my grade nine year. Nearly a decade and a half might be a great long time in such an ever-changing period of life, but I’ll always wish it had been longer.
Keeto filled those years with countless good memories. There was the time she thought herself so fierce, growling at a duck in the greenery—until it took off and scared her off, yelping dramatically (and blessedly caught on video).
There was the time a mouse got in the house, thoroughly startling John-Mark and I as it skittered across the bed with us—and Keeto—in it, and she didn’t even notice. Other times she definitely seemed to think herself more cat than dog, lounging across the top of the couch and in every sunspot she could find.
Most of the memories are of her quotidian mannerisms—how she could be roused from the seemingly deepest slumber at the tiny click of the TV turning off after the news: her cue to make a final trip outside before bed. How she never failed to run, howling with joy, to the door whenever its bell rang. Dad had to change its tone last week—it just didn’t sound right without that faithful cacophonous accompaniment.
There was the ritual so-long message Dad introduced at the door—when the humans were going out and she wasn’t—“Bye-bye, Keeto,” he would gently intone, “bye-bye Puppy Girl.” Ever the optimist, she came hopefully to the door even when it was a human-only outing. And she certainly bounded gleefully out of it whenever it was a Keeto-centered one: there were countless walks to the river, with her tail joyfully aloft and toenails skittering on the gravel; walks to the groomer, with more fervent toenail-skitters in her keenness to be away from that dread place; there were long cozy bouts of reading with her curled in my lap—in front of a cheerily crackling fire in the winter, in the hammock in the summer; there was her perched gingerly on the front of the paddleboard, keen to menace the ducks on the lake but even more keen to keep out of the water.
There were long winter evenings spent gathered around the fire, with Keeto roving from lap to lap, and finally to the tile floor when she got too hot, sprawled contentedly surrounded by her people. There were the little puppy shoes she never got the hang of walking in, and vociferously resisted having on, that rarely stayed put past the end of the driveway. There were pandemic quarantines during which she was the most delightful (and delighted) companion; were it up to her, they would have never ended. There were family dinners in which she took up her post next to Grandpa’s chair—for there her begging prospects were surest: he just couldn’t resist those puppy dog eyes and pleas.
Her favourite foods were pepperoni sticks (much to Dad’s chagrin), string cheese (much to John-Mark’s), and—perhaps above all else—fresh garden peas. The fenced garden was affectionately dubbed her “playpen,” and she my parents’ “supervisor.” She accumulated many nicknames through the years: Keeto Louise, Mom’s Little Lamb, Puppy Girl, Puppy Girlfriend, Miss K., Keeto Puppy, Keeko, Squeaker, Keeto my Sweeto.
She was one of a kind and—antics and quirks notwithstanding—a really, really good girl.
“Bye-bye Keeto; bye-bye Puppy Girl.”
Natasha (Strydhorst) Unsworth (‘16) is a science communication researcher and practitioner working on her Ph.D. at Texas Tech University. Natasha hails from Calgary, Alberta. Some of her favo(u)rite authors are C. S. Lewis, Francis Collins, and Bill Bryson. Her favourite earthly place is the Canadian Rocky Mountains, and her favourite activities are reading and enjoying the great outdoors—preferably simultaneously.
