Frank the dog came home with us on March 31, 2019. We drove to Toronto to meet him and he was immediately like ‘yep, good, let’s go.’
Our previous dog, Henry, had been officially named Chancellor Heinrich von Fluffenstein Poopyface, and so Frankie was dubbed Major General Frank E. Wigglebottom Schmidt. Though we often called Henry ‘the Chancellor,’ Frank’s moniker was subsequently forgotten.
Once it was clear he was our dog, we got in the car to drive back to Ottawa and he slept the whole way. We thought it was great, Henry had been terrible in the car. Turns out he was probably just exhausted from the other dogs in his foster home.
It took him a little while to get comfortable with us, but once he did his personality really started to shine.
On May 31, he found the bag that we had prepared for his dog obedience classes and ate all the treats, presumably for the irony.
The first time I found him in the dishwasher was July 25. Later, once day when we went out get ice cream, we learned he could actually get the dishwasher open. Very nimble with his front paws.
On July 26, he figured out he could get around the gate we put up to keep him in one room by climbing onto a chair and jumping over it, onto the stairs. He took advantage of this to tear apart a garbage bag.
In August he figure out how to get up on the dining room table by climbing onto the chairs. Once there, he peed on the jigsaw puzzle I was working on.
We went out for breakfast on August 30 and came home to a pink dog and a living room full of garbage, including my take-out container from Cora’s, which contained raspberries.
August 31, he got into the pantry and pulled out three boxes of crackers, cadbury chocolate, uncooked pasta and a bag of quinoa while we were out. He also went into the kid’s backpack and threw some markers around for good measure.
That’s when I started moving food to different cupboards. The next time I came home there were cookie cutters everywhere.
Over the Christmas season he decided to join in the celebrations and eat a block of shortening and some chocolate chips.
Then there was the day that I had to call the vet to find out what to do when he might have ingested dish soap — he certainly spilled it, whether he actually licked any up, I have no idea.
My favourite thing was when Frank “escaped.” Two or three times he got out of the backyard and made his way directly to the front door and barked to be let in. The first time I hadn’t realized he had escaped until he demanded to come inside.
And hiding his bone in places where none of us would ever find them. Like our laundry basket.
He never got used to the snow, he refused to go out in the rain — which I guess is his prerogative, having been on the street so long. When he came home with us, I was working from home, and when I went back to working in an office, my husband was at home a lot, and then Covid happened, so it was very rare that he was without one of us. He often waited by the door when there was a person missing from the house, especially if the time got late.
For the past two years he has been in heart failure. When we started him on the first medication, our vets—our truly wonderful vets—told us that, on average, a dog in heart failure gets maybe a year.
When we got to the emergency vet last night she said she was baffled that he had lived so long. Frank often baffled the vets. One of my favourite memories is taking him for a regular check up and hearing one of the vets say: “that’s not scientifically possible.”
That was Frank—against all odds.
Frankie, born in Colombia on an unknown date. Destroyer of toys, mischief maker, very good boy, died June 20, 2024.
