This is the last picture I ever took with my soul dog, Powder, before an orange-sized tumor stole her away from me forever in December 2021. One day she was running around howling with her iconic “woo!” and the next she was lying wrapped in a blanket on the floor of the emergency vet.
But let’s flash back 12 years to 2009. Shortly after our first encounter—her dashing in front of my car during a late-night veggie dog run in college and me hitting the brakes in a panic—it became evident that Powder was my soul dog. I had been the teenager whose severe social anxiety kept me from leaving my house for anything besides school for a year because I was convinced everyone thought I smelled bad. And when at school, I obsessively applied deodorant in the bathroom between classes to combat my profuse sweating. Powder was the lost puppy who’d been abandoned at a motel and spent every thunderstorm trembling in the bathtub as though we were in a nuclear war.
Powder growled and lunged at every dog because they scared her. I, meanwhile, hid my gifts from a world I thought would reject me. We seemed meant for one another—and only one another.
But inside Powder was something inexplicable: an effervescent “woo!” that she’d emit immediately after every storm cleared. The disastrous became comical; life, quite frequently, became impossible to take so seriously.
With Powder at my side, I actually went on the exact opposite of my teenage trajectory: I became a career-long activist, protesting on the streets, making phone calls, being at the helm of events with thousands of people, and waging and winning global campaigns.
I never really stopped to think about all the confidence she’d given me through that simple vocalization; she was just a boundless energy, unconditionally there. But in 2021 I lost Powder to cancer that had invaded her heart seemingly overnight. It was the final punch after a profound year of grief: marked by the passing of my second mom, Sherrie, perhaps my greatest cheerleader, to a sudden mysterious illness and the rollercoaster 7-month-long hospitalization of my dad.
My upcoming book, The Dog Who Wooed at the World, the first anthology from The Every Animal Project, is the product of my grappling with the gaping hole in my heart, and my forward voyage into an uncertain future devoid of that therapeutic “woo!” when I needed it the most. It is my reckoning with the instability of life, the inevitability of death, and the uniquely human quest for order and answers, when perhaps a simple “woo!” would suffice. And it is a reflection on the courage Powder imbued in me to take some of the scariest steps of my life, including persisting after her death. Between its covers, you’ll find Powder and my twin tales of thriving through anxiety-inducing mental illnesses, as well as many more inspiring stories and photos of courageous animals like Powder from people around the world.
Through the generous posthumous support of my late beloved Sherrie—whose compassion was boundless, exemplified by the story of her nurturing of a tiny june bug—the anthology will be marketed to thousands of people around the world, prompting them to rethink their relationships with all animals, from dogs and cats to fishes and crabs, and help build a kinder world.
Submissions to the anthology are now closed! Join our newsletter below to get exclusive updates in advance of the book’s launch in 2024.
(Book cover photo by Rachel Gill of Animlz)