must love dogs

no seriously, don't open this if you're not a dog person.

Before we begin, a quick editorial note.

It’s been a busy and challenging few weeks, hence my unscheduled absence last week. I’m also in the midst of grinding out a new book proposal, so will be putting the newsletter on a short break until after Labor Day. After that, I’ll have lots of exciting content to come that will stem from a fall travel schedule that is back to pre-pandemic levels. In the meantime, thanks for your support.

---

An update on my case against Fox. 

In early August, my legal team filed an amended complaint in my defamation suit against Fox News. My team and I spoke with NPR’s David Folkenflik about the filing. You can read the interview here. 

The long and short of it is this: my team and I believe that my case could be the Dominion for personal defamation suits against Fox News and their ilk. I am proud of the amended complaint my legal team filed, and hugely grateful for the work they’re putting in on this because they—like me—believe powerful corporations should not be able to lie for profit and ruin people’s lives in the process. 

---

I know this newsletter is meant to be about disinformation, democracy, and digital hate, but I hope you’ll indulge me as I introduce a fourth D this week: dogs. On Friday, my dog Jake (of NPR All Things Considered fame) died at home after a long life and a sharp decline. (Sorry about mistakes! Written through tears!)

In memoriam: Jake the Husky-Shepherd, 2009-2023

Jake found himself in our lives by chance. While my then-fiancé and I were looking for our first apartment together, we ended up at a pizza place in Northern Virginia that supported a local shelter. The shelter had a website; the website had a picture of Jake. 

Jake strongly resembled my childhood dog, who, two years earlier, had predeceased my father by a few months, leaving an obviously enormous hole in my life. We had to compete for Jake with another family who was deemed equally suitable for dog ownership; they had four kids of various ages who cried when our family was the one pulled out of the hat. Another lucky break: if Jake had gone to that family he almost certainly would have been surrendered when they discovered his unpredictability and reactivity.

In that way, Jake was perfect for a young couple with no kids. I was on the edge of everything when he came home: finishing graduate school, getting married, getting a job. I had plenty of time to take him on long walks. I loved devising adventures for us to take around the area: hikes through old battlefields, beach trips, and highly choreographed race training runs when I’d complete a certain number of miles and hand the dog over to my husband as I flew past at a predetermined place on a trail. 

But Jake wasn’t an easy dog. He once destroyed an expensive pair of headphones, eating the entire cord, but leaving the jack and the headphones themselves on the carpet as evidence of his crime. He threw up the cord—in tact!—the next day. 

An hour before the call time for a community theater performance of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown where I was playing Sally, Jake ate a small box of chocolates. My husband was out, and couldn’t get home quickly. I called pet poison control, administered hydrogen peroxide at their direction, and watched as Jake projectile vomited a Rorschach splat of dark brown liquid all over the beige carpet of our rental. We were charged for a new carpet when we moved out. 

When he came to us, Jake hated men in hats, people wearing backpacks, and most other dogs, especially if they were larger than him or tried to assert dominance. We worked with a behaviorist to ease his phobias and learn how to read the messages he sent when he was about to freak out. Eventually he softened, perhaps due to his age, or perhaps because he knew he was safe with us, and we wouldn’t let anyone or anything hurt him. (He knew this to be true because I would literally throw myself down between him and errant dogs whose owners were too entitled or too stupid to leash them on hiking trails. I would get into fights with strangers who tried to pet him without asking. I remember being sad for Jake one Labor Day weekend as we watched the neighborhood dogs enjoy the “doggie paddle” at our apartment complex’s pool. “He’ll never be able to do something like that,” I told my husband, tearful, as if he were a disabled child.)

What I didn’t know then, early in the more than ten years Jake spent with us, is that he didn’t need or want to do that, or anything else we thought he “should” enjoy. Yes, he loved our adventures, but he equally enjoyed our walks around the neighborhood and romps in our backyard. What mattered to him most was being with us. I like to think the one transcendental cuddle we had with him while camping at Assateague Island was as special for him as it was for us...but he was probably just cold on a chilly April night by the ocean. 

I started working from home in 2018, pitching piece after piece, dabbling in consulting, and working on my first book. Jake was there at every turn—waking up at five o’clock and following me downstairs, sitting with me in my office (often panting nearby, stinkifying the air), curled up in sweet positions, propping his snout on pillows and desks, having little “weefmares” as he chased bunnies in his dreams. His beautiful furry mane soaked up tears when I dealt with rejections or abuse or frustration. He made me peel myself off the couch or out of bed when I was depressed, and getting a little fresh air and sunshine was exactly the injection of optimism I needed. He sat with me as I watched the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine unfold on CNN, when I was up in the middle of the night with stomach bugs or pregnancy heartburn, when I paced around the living room, enduring increasingly wrenching contractions. He was my muscle when I was dealing with death threats and abuse; even if he was hard of hearing and quite an old man at that point, he at least still looked like he could fuck you up. 

Jake made thousands of trips up and down the stairs in the 14 months he and our baby shared the planet. Even though he was perplexed by this little shrieking being, he sat guard as I nursed him, changed him, bathed him, and put him to bed. Every night, he slept in the hall between the master bedroom and the nursery, and when he grew too feeble to climb the stairs, we carried him up, so he could carry out his sacred duties. The day I found out I was pregnant, I whispered to him, “stick around, okay, buddy?” He did more than that. He kept watch over us until the day he died. 

Jake was with us through every monumental life moment since we adopted him in January 2013: marriage, buying a house (Jake pooped on the carpet in the living room the day we closed, claiming his new turf), new jobs, major crises, a baby. When we got him, adulthood stretched out in front of me like one of the adventures I planned for the three of us. It felt full of possibility. 

Even recently, Jake brought glimpses of that. In March, I dreamed about running. Despite a chronic back injury and a long postpartum recovery, I wanted to get out on the pavement, and I wanted to do it with my old running pal, Jake. I don’t think we ran very far or very fast, but we were euphoric that day. Later, I wrote: “Running with an old dog is joy. He is happy to be there, happy to have your attention, happy to be stretching his legs with you. Ears back, smiling like a puppy, biting at his leash, bounding up the hill at a speed that is tough for you to keep up with. But that’s exactly what you need.” After a long period of challenges, I felt like I was coming back to myself in that moment, and that Jake was doing it with me. 

Jake started falling on the stairs in late May. In June, he seemed to improve, learning how to navigate the new weakness he developed in his hind quarters. We tried medication for what we thought was arthritis. It didn’t help much, and made his appetite extremely poor—the dog we once nicknamed “pudge” was refusing food. I found myself so desperate to get him to eat I sat on the floor, hand feeding him his sloppy “stew” mixed with kibble, just after I had been coaxing my now-toddler to eat his dinner. 

A few days later, he laid down on a walk. He didn’t join me in my office for work, didn’t follow us upstairs at bedtime. The simple joys of his life—the ones that involved just being with us, offering silent and sturdy support—were all but inaccessible. The vet said he likely had neuropathy, and ultimately would be paralyzed, and that based on the speed of his decline, that eventuality might not be far off. 

You know the rest of the story. We faced the impossible decision that every pet owner makes. I know it was the right one. I know this grief will get easier with time. I know the next dog—years in the future—will be wonderful and different. I am so grateful for my son, our funny little boy, who loved Jake but doesn’t understand enough to know he is gone, and is bringing happiness and levity to our now comparatively quiet house. I’m happy we still have our loving cat, Baxter, who is giving us lots of cuddles and missing his big buddy. 

Lately, life has sent me a lot of challenges. It certainly doesn’t have the same shine it did when we adopted Jake. I suppose Jake’s life didn’t have a ton of shine before we turned up, either—he was abandoned by his first family and languished at a shelter for two years. But for almost eleven, he was our best pal. We didn’t give up on each other. No matter what is thrown at me next, I owe it to Jake to bring his quiet strength and commitment with me. 

Rest easy, bubba bear. I’ll miss you forever. Even your stinky fish breath. <3