Small brown and white dog with long ears sitting on the railing of a porch outside

In 2015, my wife Meg and I decided it was time to find an appropriate successor to the basset hound we had lost the year before. Living in California at the time, we drove all the way up to the Portland area to meet with a breeder who had a litter of puppies. Only one puppy was supposed to go home with us, but being basset puppies, both of them ended up in our car: Lethe, aka "CJ's Nothing but Troublepup" and Bea, aka "CJ's Tagalong Bebop".

Lethe got her name from my family tradition of naming basset hounds after Greek mythological figures. Her predecessor had been named Psyche; Lethe got her name from the river in the underworld (in Greek mythology) that flowed around the island home of Somnos, god of sleep. It felt fitting for a basset. Lethe was not so much lethargic (from which the term derives!) as self-assured and calm to the point of being aloof. Which is not to say she wasn't friendly: she was a dog who always wanted to meet everyone with an almost desperate enthusiasm. But when she wasn't trying to be a socialite, she spent her days perching like a cat at the highest elevation she could get to where she would watch the world and sleep. Unlike her anxious sister, Lethe knew what she wanted and never had any question about whether she was entitled to it. It was common to suddenly feel a paw scraping across your calf behind you if Lethe felt she hadn't been given enough attention lately.

I like to tell people Lethe is the first dog to really teach me something about life. A few years before her death, Lethe developed a hemorrhaged disc in her back that pressed on her spinal cord and, within a matter of a week or two, nearly stole all the functionality of her rear legs. A costly surgery repaired the disc, but a year of rehabilitation therapy was required to restore Lethe's ability to walk. Watching our dog in pain and suddenly lose her ability to walk without knowing if it would come back was one of the most harrowing and emotionally wrenching experiences I have ever endured, but through it all Lethe just did her Lethe thing. Even without well functioning back legs, Lethe remained unbothered and mostly wanted to do the same thing she always wanted to do: greet people at the park. Lethe taught me to live in the moment and not bring so much emotional baggage to life's hurdles. She was herself and enjoyed the things she enjoyed whether or not her legs worked, and I deeply admired that about her.

We had hoped to have a few more years with Lethe, but in May of 2024 she was diagnosed with what turned out to be a very aggressive mast cell tumor. By the time it was assessed, it had already spread to her spleen and liver, and though initially asymptomatic and given a prognosis of 2-3 months, she took a sudden turn for the worse within a couple of weeks, and we made the heartbreaking decision to let her go. We were able to say goodbye to her at home next to the couch she spent most of the last few years on and tell her how much she meant to us. I mostly don't like to think about her last 24 hours, but I won't forget that, even amidst not feeling well, she managed to climb up her perch on the couch and look out the window with an air of serenity.

We miss her profoundly, and we feel like I have a hole in our hearts that will never completely heal. Having a dog you love means having a child you know you will outlive, and there will come a moment when your heart feels so shredded that nothing will ever be ok ever again. We hate it, but then we remember how worth it it all was. Lethe was the best companion on our family's journey we could have asked for. We just wish she could have come a little farther. All of which is a lot of words for: we miss our Lelu. And we always will.