A Eulogy, to the Dog Who Changed My Life

May 14, 2011 to December 31, 2025

There’s a belief in Buddhism about time, that it’s a concept created entirely within the human mind. There is no past, no future, everything is happening in the now. All life as you know it is experienced in this present moment. I’ve been finding a lot of solace recently reading about the idea of time in relation to Buddhism. My grandmother Sukie, who my Aspetuck project is largely inspired by, was well-versed in the philosophy & I was exposed to a lot of Tibetan Buddhist wisdom through her growing up, but it didn’t truly start to resonate for me until my mid thirties. Loss reshapes the way you perceive time, it has for me at least.

On New Years Eve, I had to say goodbye to my best friend. A 14-year-old dog named Peanut. He was the most remarkable animal I’ve had the pleasure of sharing my life with. I wasn’t planning on writing about any of this, but the words & thoughts are bubbling up like a boiling pot of water, so I decided to use them as a way to honor & cherish his memory & reflect on our life together.

Peanut & I at my wedding, September 2020

I gather my thoughts this afternoon as I trek around the trails at Olana State Historic Site, near my home in upstate New York. I breathe the cold, fresh winter air, deep into my chest, & look back upon the 150 or so times in the past year that I’ve set foot here, Peanut by my side. Despite my best hopes & intentions to be in the present moment & enjoy my surroundings as I walk, the memories of the past 14 years race through my mind like cars around a track.

I’ve diverted a lot of my attention to him for the past year or so, acutely aware of his mortality. Now that he’s gone, I’ve found myself contemplating the nature of time itself, thinking about the impact he has had on my life. Always a youthful soul, he wore his aging well as it started to show, signs of it becoming more & more visible in the past 5 years, on his face, on his fur, in his behavior. It was objectively very difficult to come to terms with this impermanence, but it forced me to enjoy every moment I possibly could with him & for that I am so grateful. I look back through photos when we were living in Los Angeles & Brooklyn. There was no white & gray on his face, he looks like a completely different dog altogether, quite slim with a narrower facial structure & darker tones on his fur. It’s almost unfamiliar for me to see, but then I see photos of myself back then & I notice all of the differences about me & how much I’ve physically changed as well. We grew up together, the two of us.

August 2025

His more recent, lighter color tones really suited him, it’s the version of him I’ll remember. He was in peak physical form for his age the past couple of years, something I’ll always be so proud of. We were in a constant state of motion, refusing to succumb to the inertia of old age, cruising the sidewalks, trudging through the snow & ice, running full speed through the woods, exploring & adventuring on new trails, up mountains, around lakes, past waterfalls. People could not believe he was 14, we’d get stopped on the street all the time & his age was a constant topic of discussion. He had the energy of a puppy for his the majority of his life.

I’ll rewind the tape a bit, back to 2012 when we first crossed paths. I was in a previous relationship at the time, living in Brooklyn just after graduating college as my brother Pierce’s music career was starting to take shape. At the ripe age of 22, I was not feeling ready for anymore responsibility, managing my brother was keeping me busy enough. There was a conversation about fostering a dog & I couldn’t have been less interested in the idea. After a fair amount of resistance, I caved & in came Peanut, or ‘Mr. Peanut’ as the shelter called him.

Mugshot circa May 14, 2012, Spartanburg County, South Carolina

A scrawny, unkempt & quite frankly traumatized stray mutt arrived at my Brooklyn apartment in June of 2012. His intake papers said he was ‘seized / in custody’ ‘running at large’ along train tracks in Spartanburg, South Carolina. He was said to be a ‘shepherd mix’ but a DNA test later revealed he was quite a broad mix of breeds, but primarily Labrador Retriever, Golden Retriever & Siberian Husky. The test also said he may have had some ancestry from a few other breeds such as the exotic Ibizan Hound which I’d never heard of at the time, & the Chow Chow which gave him his uniquely spotted tongue. To me he just looked like one of those stray dogs you see in Mexico or eastern Europe. I always hoped this would mean he’d have strong genetics & would live a long & healthy life. He did :)

He was full of boundless energy, had the kindest face & the most endearing floppy ears. He was not at all prepared for life in the big city. It was overwhelmingly loud & chaotic for a country dog. He was timid, riddled with anxiety, too nervous to eat & really required a lot of love & encouragement. He refused to poop on the omnipresent concrete sidewalks in the city & I remember having to take him up to our roof where it was a bit quieter with less stimuli in those early days. It was a lot of work trying to help this dog transition into this new environment, especially when I wasn’t really interested in looking after my own dog in the first place.

In that 2 week foster period though, something changed inside of me. I noticed myself relishing in the responsibility, recognizing the positives in caring for something other than myself. I was also quite an anxious, timid, skinny thing at the time too! We were the perfect match & I was starting to come to terms with that. Suddenly the foster period came to an end a few weeks later & one day the shelter called, saying a couple was interested in adopting the dog. My heart hit the floor when I heard the news, I had grown so attached to the dog in that short period of time, I couldn’t let him go. Remembering the foster agreement gave the foster parents the right of first refusal, I jumped at the chance to keep the dog.

A few years later, the relationship I was in at the time suddenly came to an end, but like a gift from the Universe, Peanut remained in my possession. I look back at that time with fondness, just the two of us cozying up for the start of winter, between 2013 & 2014 in the top floor of a Brooklyn brownstone. It wasn’t a happy time, but the memories feel soft & hold a lot of significance. Peanut & I would go on these extremely long walks every night throughout my neighborhood of Clinton Hill, walking at a fast pace with no goal other than to find peace. I was accompanied by the ever-soothing & meditative Minilogue - Blomma in my headphones. It was the beginnings of a deep, deep bond that I never imagined I’d be lucky enough to have.

Out of the blue during those gloomy days & nights in late January of 2014, I met someone. A beacon of light shining towards me through the fog. A girl named Hannah, who had the warmth of a thousand suns. It was the real deal right from the start & became serious very quickly. A dog lover, she accepted Peanut as her own immediately.

I’ll never forget this one time, very early on in our relationship when I asked her to pick up his poop while we were walking along the East River in Manhattan one afternoon. “Can you grab that for me?” I said & she makes a funny face, alerting me to the fact that she hadn’t done that before. “You have a dog, what do you mean?!?!” I laughed & told her what to do & she got it done. It was the beginnings of a funny, heart-warming theme that popped up throughout our relationship for the past 11+ years.

Fast forwarding again a few years & it’s October of 2019. She & I are walking along the beach, engagement ring in my pocket, bag of dog poop in her hand as we walked with her family’s 17-year-old dog Sophie. I’d been planning this moment for months, designing the ring, coordinating with family members, keeping it all under extremely wraps as if I was handling classified information. I wanted it to be a complete surprise & she had no idea. I kindly ask her multiple times if she could please put the bag down somewhere. There was no way I was doing this while she was holding a bag of poop. Naturally my nerves were completely out of control so I was a bit jumpy & impatient, as I tried to find the perfect moment & muster the courage to get down on one knee to ask Hannah for her hand in marriage. I clearly wasn’t making a lot of sense from her point of view, she didn’t want to litter. Eventually I just accepted it for what it was & made the move, kneeling down & bursting into tears immediately as I asked her to marry me, while she romantically held a bag of dog poop. It wasn’t quite how I pictured it in my head but she could care less about the poop. Most girls would be mortified by the idea of that. To her it was hilarious, endearing & perfect. It warms my heart & puts a smile on my face, as I think about how lucky I am to have found someone who thinks that story is as funny as I do & appreciates the little imperfections in life. Thank you Peanut for teaching her that important life skill all those years ago, if it wasn’t for you, she wouldn’t have been holding that bag of poop!

Fast forwarding another 4 & a half years & it’s Easter in 2024. This important life skill has officially been passed down to the next generation. Our then almost 3-year-old daughter Freddie was gifted a little bucket & shovel by my parents on a chilly early spring afternoon. Allow me to paint the scene - my sister Addie has arrived dressed in a full bunny costume, hopping around our yard like a maniac. She was covered in mud after multiple tumbles but so beautifully channeling the spirit of our brother Pierce who would’ve been the one wearing the bunny. We were worried it would be too scary for Freddie, it reminded me a bit of Donnie Darko. Meanwhile Peanut is running around at full speed barking at her having the time of his life, & Freddie is fully convinced that the actual Easter Bunny is at her house to hang out with her for the day. My parents had other hopes & dreams for the shovel & bucket they’d gifted her, maybe it was for an Easter egg hunt or just something she could use for playing in the yard, but our daughter had inherited our wit & nonchalance around canine bodily functions & she had other plans. Without any prompt from any of us, she starts walking around, scooping up Peanut’s poop in the yard & tossing it in a pile in the way back of the yard. She’d seen her dad cleaning up after her pal Peanut all the time & she wanted to be just like me. Everyone was in tears laughing, it was the best day.

For most of his life, Peanut was actually quite scared & defensive around kids. He’d have a visceral reaction when walking by them on the street, jumping back with his tail between his legs, ears back, shoulders tightened & hair raised on his back if one happened to approach him. I’d have to intentionally keep him at a distance from kids, always a little bit afraid of the unknown; as predictable as dogs can be, they can also be extremely unpredictable. In Peanut’s defense, a child’s body language is quite foreign & unusual, as compared to the body language of an adult. The majority of adults have learned how to behave around dogs. Kids just don’t know how to yet & they can be pretty fearless / nonchalant. Some kids don’t have dogs at home or haven’t had enough experiences with dogs to understand how to behave, & Peanut hadn’t had enough experiences around them either, positive ones at least. I always wondered if it was because of some kind of trauma that he experienced as a stray in his first year. “What will he do if we have a kid?” we thought.

When our daughter Freddie was born in June of 2021, Peanut experienced the closest thing to depression in a dog that I’ve ever seen. We were very freshly dealing with the loss of my brother & learning how to care for a newborn baby so things in the house were tense. He was walking on egg shells. His environment as he knew it had changed drastically overnight. He was an incredibly sensitive, empathetic dog who mirrored my emotions & felt things very deeply. I imagine the weight of it all was just overwhelming for him. It certainly was for me. It was really tough for us to watch, but there wasn’t much we could do as he had to take a bit of a back seat for a while after the hierarchy in the house shifted away from him being our sole responsibility. He was miserable for months, both literally & figuratively out of sight, hiding from us when Freddie was awake, only to come out to see us when she’d go down for a nap. Surely an old dog can learn to adapt though, especially one as smart & sensitive as Peanut. The poor guy didn’t have a choice & it took a bit of time, but he got there eventually.

I remember the week we started feeding Freddie solid foods. We gave her some avocado & I’ll never forget the face of absolute disgust she made. Eventually she was trying all kinds of stuff in her little tripp trapp chair in our kitchen. She’d chuck it all over the place like a monkey, smacking her tray with both hands into whatever mushy blend was the new flavor of the day, tiny specks of green, orange & brown veggies magically appearing on every surface within a 5-foot radius of her chair. There was more food on her face than in her belly, & the floor was a goldmine for a dog. So just like that, Peanut appeared from his period of contemplation & started to become himself again, finding his place in the new household dynamics that were taking place. I have the fondest of memories of those first moments Peanut & Freddie began to truly connect & love each other, as she fed him food from her tray. Of course food was the catalyst, it’s a dynamic between dogs & humans that has existed for thousands of years. It was one of the most beautiful arcs I’ve ever experienced in a relationship. Like something out of a movie & it just got better & better.

Sometime around then I remember Freddie’s first laugh, while she & I were sitting on the couch in our living room. I was squeezing one of Peanut’s toys, a very VERY stinky stuffed animal with a good squeak. Fred liked the sound of course, but then she noticed Peanut’s reaction to the sound. He was a very animated dog, with the most expressive face & ears that would perk up at the slightest of sounds. The sound of the toy was making Peanut go nuts, with all sorts of funny facial expressions. I waved it around in his face & he tried to bite it a bunch of times really quickly, chomping at the air. Baby Freddie all of the sudden erupts into the purest, most incredible belly laugh. My wife & I locked eyes & couldn’t believe what we were hearing as oxytocin flooded our brains.

As a stay at home dad, I was responsible for both Freddie & Peanut a lot of the time during the week, so it was often the three of us walking around town, playing in the yard, hanging out at home. I miss those days pushing Freddie in a stroller down the street with Peanut on a leash in my other hand. It taught me so much about juggling responsibilities & being present, managing stress, multitasking & letting go. We spent so many hours together the three of us exploring along the Hudson River, throwing sticks, playing soccer, watching the birds fly by, tossing rocks in the water & watching the ice float by. It hurts to think about. I walked down there right after we said goodbye to Peanut on New Years Eve. It’s one of my favorite places to sit quietly, but this time it was too much for me to be there, under that tree by the river. But as I’ve learned with the grief of losing my brother - with time, it’ll be the most wonderful comfort to remember all of those special times. How lucky am I to have those memories?

The effects of loss are so profound, in the way that it pushes all of the love you have for someone to the surface of your consciousness. I remember this feeling when I lost my brother. A raw vulnerability emanating from your entire being. There’s of course the deepest emotional pain imaginable, but there’s also a tremendous amount of beauty that you experience, if you can allow yourself to look at things in that way. I’ve noticed that loss makes me appreciate everything & everyone around me. I can feel the pain of others as I walk by them on the street. It’s omnipresent really & is a normal part of life. It’s a comforting reminder for me that I’m not alone & that everyone is suffering in some shape or form. I take a little more time to cherish a beautiful sunset, or laugh at something trivial that might’ve annoyed me some other time. The layers that are usually protecting my vulnerability fall away, like soft sedimentary rock gradually being worn down by wind, water & ice, revealing fossils, igneous & metamorphic rock underneath.

Peanut’s decline happened gradually, over the last year or so. I noticed him stopping more & more on our hikes, pretending to sniff something on the side of the trail, but I always knew when that was an excuse to take a quick break. It was hard for me, I didn’t want to accept that he was slowing down. There was a moment last summer when I thought it was the beginning of the end. Shortly after his 14th birthday, he seemed a bit off, sick with something maybe & extremely lethargic. My mind went into panic mode & the emotions poured out of me. I’ve always heard things can happen very quickly with old dogs & was so afraid this was it. I made the track I included at the top, “Song for Peebah", during that week & I’m so glad I did because when I hear it now, it captures the way his memory feels to me. Peebah is what Freddie used to call him when she was learning how to talk. The idea just poured out of me one day that week, as I was cherishing his beautiful soul & the sweetness that he’d given me for all of my adult life.

Thankfully, a few days later he bounced back & was his normal 14-year-old self again: old, stinky & eager to keep moving. He remained that way for about 8 months, joining me on all those blissful morning hikes at Olana as we observed the changing of the seasons together throughout the spring, summer & fall of 2025. I’m very thankful for that brief scare last spring, it slowed me down to the present moment & helped me to prepare to say goodbye, as I began a period of pre-grieving the loss of my dear friend.

Every moment with him felt like a gift & I tried my best to allocate as much of my love & attention towards him, setting aside a lot of the time & emotional energy I usually put towards being in the studio making music. 6 months after that first sign, around the end of November, there was another moment indicating things were changing for the worse & he was no longer able to join me on our hikes. His vet warned me that he was the kind of dog who would be his active, usual self until the very end & that I’d know when it was his time. He & I went through a transition period, reshuffling our daily routine where he’d just go on short, flat walks through town & I’d do our hikes on my own. It took me a while to get used to hiking without him. My brain was so accustomed to the routine of feeling his tension pulling the leash in my hand, stopping occasionally to make all of his usual pit stops along the trails, hearing his happy whining when I carried him out of the car & he realized we were at our favorite hiking spot. I still can’t believe he was jogging alongside me up until only a few months ago. What a gift.

All of those memories flood back today, as I walk those same trails for the first time since he crossed the rainbow bridge. “He was my best puppy” Freddie said in tears after we told her the news on New Years Eve. She didn’t get to say goodbye to him, which is something that will hurt my heart for a long time. All of the sudden, Peanut’s gradual decline became a very rapid one, as he started to have very serious issues with his lower back & hind legs. I suspected it was something related to a compressed or bulging disc in his lower spine, putting pressure on his spinal cord, causing severe pain & affecting his ability to walk properly without slipping or losing his balance. He was too old for surgery so the best we were able to do was try to help him be comfortable with some new medication. It was gut-wrenching seeing him transform in the blink of an eye. He wasn’t the Peanut I knew anymore, sitting in bed all day until I had to coax him outside a few short times a day for very brief walks. On New Years Eve things went very south with him all of the sudden & we knew it was time to say goodbye. As much as I had tried to prepare myself for this moment, there’s truly nothing you can do to avoid the searing pain, like a glowing red hot iron on my heart. This was the last thing we listened to together, as I laid on the floor with him, hand on his fur, face pressed up against his.

It’s a profound loss for me, akin to losing a family member. A dog’s life is only a fraction of a human’s, but the love they give in such a short amount of time is just astonishing. I am the person I am today because of this animal & I’m so grateful that my own life’s events & choices were able to bring him into my wife’s & daughter’s lives as well. Thank you for finding me Peanut, you will be so deeply missed ❤️.

PS, here he is featured on the album cover of my very first Aspetuck album, released in March 2020.

PPS, a track I made in 2019 after he got in a small harmless brawl with a friend’s dog King over some food. King had Peanut’s snout in his mouth & one of his teeth left a small scar that remained there for his entire life. I remember when I got home, seeing him sulking around sad & embarrassed at our apartment in the hills of Laurel Canyon & this song popped out in response.