If you’re lucky enough in your lifetime, you’ll meet one soul that changes you for the better. In my case, that soul was inside a little brown dog named Ruger. His soul was made of more than just stardust. He possessed something much greater inside of him, a kind of love and magic that continues to live well beyond the short years he was given in this life.
When I set out to write Happily Never Afterlife, I didn’t know much about the story and the characters, but I knew it was going to have a dog in it. Before the final story took shape, the character of Remington was born, a Boykin Spaniel that belonged to Mae many decades ago when she was alive. Remington, also called Remy in the story for short, is my tribute to my Ruger, who passed away in February 2024.
For eight years of my life, Ruger played a big role in shaping who I became as a young woman. I was in college when my parents brought him home as a 10 week old puppy someone was trying to sell on Craigslist. It was nine months after my childhood Golden Retriever, Bailey, had passed away. I was not handling life without a dog very well. When I saw Ruger for the first time, I fell to my knees and sobbed. It’s one of the only moments in my life where I can confidently say, I understood “love at first sight.”
We knew from the very beginning that Ruger was a very special boy. It only took two weeks before we learned the truth of all his genetic abnormalities and the challenges he would face in his short life. He was born with bad eyes and went blind at just a few months old. Numerous surgeries later, and his vision was able to be restored. He also had bad legs and required additional corrective surgeries so he could regain the ability to walk.
And for awhile, with his medicine regiment and in-home vet care and laser therapy sessions, Ruger was the happiest and healthiest dog he could be. But unfortunately, my family knew that each day was borrowed time. We knew our time with Ruger would be more limited than we wanted. It’s never enough time with your pets, but it was definitely not enough time with Ruger as we said goodbye to him just nine days shy of his eighth birthday. His pain had become beyond our ability to contain it, and we had to make the humane decision and let him go.
My family and I miss him every day, and not a day goes by where we don’t think about him or talk about just how amazing Ruger was. His legacy will always live on through us.
I began working on Happily Never Afterlife two months after his passing. It was a way for me to work on something productive amidst the grief. I knew that I wanted to do something to keep Ruger alive in some way. It was too painful to name the character Ruger so I chose the name of another gun brand to allow some separation between my real life and the fiction on the page. It’s the only way I could get through this process of working on this book without crying.
As much as I want this novel to be about a romantic comedy that focuses on my main characters, I also want this story to be a tribute to the loved ones I’ve lost in my life. Ruger was such an influential force in my life. He taught all of us what true resilience and perseverance were. He taught us loyalty. That dog never once gave up. And despite his ailments and everything he endured in his life, Ruger lived the best damn life a little brown dog could live. He would swim in the pool. He chased the squirrels. He played fetch. He explored the woods. Ruger was unstoppable.
It felt insurmountable to grieve his loss, and even writing this blog two years later, I still can’t manage to talk about Ruger without sobbing.
But within the pages of Happily Never Afterlife, he gets to live on through Remington.
As an author, I feel blessed to be in such a unique position to immortalize the important moments, people, and souls that have impacted my life. I couldn’t think of anything better than to envision an Afterlife where Ruger was happy and healthy again. He plays a central role in the story as Mae embarks on her journey of self-discovery. While I don’t want to give away any spoilers, I think the inclusion of Remington as a character was important to Mae’s overall growth throughout the story. He provides a sense of comfort and familiarity that she desperately needs as she adjusts to being dead. And let’s face it, don’t we all want to be reunited with our lost pets and loved ones when it’s our time to walk into that white light at the end of the tunnel?
So, to you, my dear Ruger, thank you for always inspiring me to keep going, to stay strong, and to live my life with love and joy in my heart. I promise that you will never be forgotten. Not as long as I can still hold a pen.
