In Loving Memory of Sadie

October 23, 2026:

Today would have been Sadie's 15th birthday. I guess technically I don't know exactly when she was born, but a couple of vets told me when I first got her that she was about a year old, so I decided that October 23, 2012, the day I adopted her, was her 1st birthday. That was 14 years ago today.

This might be long, and if anyone chooses to read it, great, but I'm mostly just writing it out for myself.

The day I adopted Sadie was a Tuesday. I don't know why I went on Petfinder while I was eating my lunch that day; I always wanted a dog, but I never had one before. I saw a picture on the site of a Shiba Inu that had just come into a rescue center about 35 miles away. After work I went to go meet her. She didn't have a name or much of a backstory other than that she had been surrendered to a no-kill shelter, but when her time was up and no one had adopted her she got sent to a kill shelter. Whenever the rescue center had a vacancy they would go to the kill shelters and take the most adoptable dogs that were scheduled to be put down the soonest. Instead of being put down, she got spayed, and the next day I adopted her. My son, Jacob, was 6 at the time. He used to tell people, "We got her at the last minute!" and it was pretty much true. I like to think it was mutual. I mean, without her chances are I wouldn't have made it out of 2012 either.

I took her straight from the rescue center to meet the boys. We had cats that were our family pets, but they were both really excited that we were getting a dog. Derek was only 3 at the time. He said that he wanted to name her Foxxy because she looked like a fox. I sat for a couple of hours calling out potential names to her. When I said Sadie, which had been my grandmother's name, she turned and looked at me, so that's what we went with. Over the years she also developed more nicknames than Skippy's got peanut butter.

There was one time that winter when I was really sick with a high fever. I couldn't get warm, and I had sweats on and a knit hat on my head. Sadie needed me to take her out, but I wouldn't wake up, so she proceeded to eat the hat off my head by grabbing one strand in her mouth and running. When I finally woke up, the entire hat was just one big tangled mess of yarn on the floor.

When my sons were little they would fall asleep next to each other a lot. Sadie would always position herself between them at their feet. As they got older she would want to sleep wherever Derek was because she needed to "protect the baby". She still followed him around everywhere right up until the end. If he wasn't home, she would often hang out at the foot of his bed. Even when he was over 6' tall and more than 200 lbs. she still had to protect the baby.

The boys and I used to go hiking a lot with her in the early days. Derek recalls one time when right at the end of a hike he fell in a giant mud hole, but he had been carrying her to keep her out of the mud, and he managed to lift her up and keep her clean.

We also used to go play wiffle ball all the time, too, and she would come out to the field with us and just lay in the grass while we played. She came to so many of the boys' baseball, soccer, and basketball games over the years. She would even come stand up paddleboarding with me. I had a PFD for her that had a shark fin on it, and we would sing "Sadie Shark" to the tune of the "Baby Shark" theme.

She also had a four step process for getting my attention if she wanted to go out while I was on a business call. First, she would scratch at the door. If that didn't work, she would hit the hard spring door stop with her paw. Next she would knock over the fireplace tools. Lastly, she would walk over to the Roomba and press her paw on the button to start vacuuming. Then I would have to pay attention to her! We used to joke that with as much as she shed at least she tried to clean up after herself.

By 2022 she tore the CCL in her right hind leg. The vet told me that hopefully she would be able to compensate with the other leg and scar tissue would stabilize the right leg enough. Unfortunately, she tore the CCL in her left hind leg a few months later. At that point she couldn't stand up. She was 11 at the time, but she had no other health issues, and I would have built her a little cart with wheels on it before even entertaining the other option proposed to me. I opted to do bilateral TPLO surgery in March 2023 so that she would be able to walk again. That was 12 weeks of tough recovery, but she was a champ. She had more than 3.5 years of really good life after that where she could not only walk again, but she could also run and play. I'm so glad I made that decision.

Often when I traveled for work she would go to stay with my family in North Jersey. She absolutely loved going there. My nephew would play with her and read to her for hours. She even had a special comfy chair that she would sleep in when she was there. I know my niece and nephew adored her, and she loved them very much as well.

As she started to get older I thought she might like to have a friend. Her best friend had been our cat, The Boof, but she had passed in 2020. Then another completely random thing happened. In October 2025, I was driving back from visiting my son at college when I was stopped in non-moving, car in park, traffic. One of the Shiba Inu groups I follow on Facebook had a post from a Shiba Rescue that had an urgent need for someone to foster two senior Shibas who needed to be rehomed because their human had to go into an assisted living facility. I said they were welcome to stay with us until they found their forever home, so they joined us as fosters on November 1, 2025. It very quickly became apparent that their forever home was with us, so I adopted them as well on December 27. That's how we got Adonis and Bianca, and I became the crazy guy with an entire Shiba pack. We had a really snowy winter last year, but on our walks I would tell them that they were training for the Iditarod.

Sadie loved having them around this last year. She was so happy. She followed Adonis around everywhere right up until the end. Oddly, over the last couple months she would get upset when I would give him a treat (even though she always got exactly the same treat at the same time). She would scrunch her cute little face up, and it was hilarious. There's a photo of it in the slideshow that I created. I would ask her why she was mad at him "just for existing". We called it "Cooj face" because I would give Adonis his treat and tell him, "Now get out of here before she goes Cujo on you." I attributed this new behavior to "dogmentia" and told Adonis she was suffering from "Treat Induced Terror & Senility" (TITS). 😂

I know the life expectancy of her breed, and I knew she was getting to the end of it. I also knew that she was slowing down, and she had developed some heart problems, but otherwise she seemed to be doing well. I never expected last Wednesday to be her last day. I already had her birthday present ready for today.

Unfortunately, last Wednesday when we went out to play in the yard like we always do, she collapsed on the ground. I couldn't get her to stand back up, and her breathing seemed labored, so I picked her up and I rushed her to the vet. She was in cardiac arrest, and they gave her oxygen and did CPR on her. They got her heart beating normally again for a few minutes, but then she had another heart attack. I was with her while they tried CPR again, but this time her little heart wouldn't start beating on its own again. I said goodbye to her, and I finally told them to stop CPR. There was no heartbeat. I sat with her in my arms for about 30 minutes, and then I came home without her.

It's so strange being in my house since she's been gone. I miss her little behaviors, even the ones that drove me nuts. I put a slideshow together because today we should have been celebrating her birthday, but she deserves to still have her life celebrated anyway. I have hundreds if not thousands of more photos of her. As I went through them it became apparent just how long she had been with us. 14 years is a long time. We did so many things together. My little boys are all grown up now. I guess as much as I miss her, watching this reminds me that she had a really good life. She was very much loved, and we'll never forget her.

RIP Sadie. We love you. We'll see you on the other side.
Happy Birthday!