Not to put too fine a point on it, but Edsel (2006-2022) had a face that even the most adoring mother might not have loved. “He looked like a creature you might find in the outback in Australia,” Edsel’s owner, Steve Greig, said recently. “He looked a little like a wombat. Or a monkey. Or a little bat.” All twelve canine pounds of Edsel had been abandoned at an animal hospital near Greig’s home in Colorado, and his prospects for adoption seemed dim, given his less-than-Instagrammable mug and the fact that he was already ten years old. Yes, an estimated twenty-three million American households adopted dogs during the pandemic, but the hot dogs being grabbed were for the most part young and fluffy and didn’t look like wombats.
Lucky for Edsel, it was a right-time, right-place situation. Greig, an accountant for an oil-and-gas company, was already several senior dogs into his calling—which is, namely, to share his home with a ten-pack of last-chance creatures likely to end up on a shelter blacklist. Edsel, except for his bulging eyes, a wayward lower fang, and his advanced age, was in better shape than many of Greig’s other dogs. In the current crew—Melvin, Fernando, Cat, Mrs. Woolworth, Raylene, Juanita, Willamena, Chalmer, Hertha, and Loretta—there are missing eyes, missing jaws, incontinence, and heart disease, among other infirmities; the average age is fifteen. (Greig also has a pig named Bikini, whose gravest condition is laziness, and a turkey named Cranberry, who is blind in one eye and has a disorder that makes him unable to hold his head upright when he’s scared or sleepy.) Until Edsel started having fainting spells a few years ago, he was as hale as could be. He was alert and expressive, with thick, wavy hair and a startled look on his face even when he wasn’t startled. A DNA test revealed that he was an admixture of Chihuahua and poodle, but he looked like no other dog in the world.
Greig hadn’t exactly set out to run a hospice for the wretched refuse of the canine universe. What propelled him was the unexpected loss, through vehicular accident, in 2012, of his dog Wolfgang, with whom he was extremely close. He was undone by his grief and decided he had to do something to make Wolfgang’s loss feel purposeful. “I went to a shelter and said, ‘Give me the oldest dog you have,’ ” Greig said. It turned out to be a twelve-year-old Chihuahua with four bad knees and a heart murmur, a dead-ender if there ever was one. Greig was buoyed by the thought that the Chihuahua, whom he named Eeyore, got to live because Wolfgang had died. “The feeling that came over me—all my pain was lifted, my burden was lifted,” he said. “Eeyore was so happy. He was a great little dog.” After the success with Eeyore, Greig took stock of his house (large) and decided that he was able to take on another senior. “Phyllis was one of the most horrific-looking dogs I’d ever seen. She was blind and had lost all her hair and had sores on her snout. No way was she getting adopted.” He adopted her. He told me that what he does isn’t just charity: senior dogs, by his accounting, are mature, easygoing, self-assured, and make wonderful companions. Greig reckons that dogs, like (most) people, become the best versions of themselves as they grow old. Since Eeyore, he estimates he has taken in nineteen seniors. He tries to cap his dog total at any one time at nine, although, as he acknowledged, a bit sheepishly, his current number is ten.
But there is constant turnover, as one might find in any golden-age community. I wondered whether adopting dogs so close to their likely expiration dates meant being in a constant state of mourning. He started to answer, but his voice was drowned out by Melvin, who was demanding some attention. Melvin is nineteen and blind, but still vociferous. “I’ve turned into his butler,” Greig said with a sigh. “He’s letting me know he needs to go out, or eat, or drink, or he’s cold.” But back to the topic of his regular goodbyes. “The joy I get out of it far outweighs the pain,” he said. “It’s hard knowing that it’s a short time, but that’s what the purpose is. I remind myself that it’s not about me; it’s about what I’m doing for them. It’s about giving them a good life. The first thing you do is grieve, but then there is that sense of satisfaction. It makes me happy, not sad.”
Apparently, Greig’s efforts make a lot of people happy; his Instagram account has a million followers. He is astonished by its popularity, especially since he had never before been on social media, and had little interest in it. “I guess people have a soft spot for old dogs,” he said. The comments he receives are uniformly positive; the question he gets most often is how he manages to keep his house so clean.
He adopts another dog each time one of his gang dies, in honor of the dog he’s lost. Edsel came into his life after Phyllis died, in 2016. Usually, he waits a little to bring in a new dog, but he received an e-mail from the animal hospital the day after Phyllis died, saying that an old dog had just been abandoned there and would be sent to a shelter (with a possibly terminal outcome) if he wasn’t adopted soon. The e-mail included an attachment with a very arresting headshot of Edsel. “My mistake was that I opened the attachment,” Greig said. “Once I saw his face . . .” He hopped in his car and headed to the hospital. When Greig walked in, Edsel was sitting on the counter with an eager expression. “He looked right at me,” Greig said. “I felt like he was saying, ‘Hey, where have you been?’ ”
Afterword is an obituary column that pays homage to people, places, and things we’ve lost. If you’d like to propose a subject for an Afterword piece, write to us at afterword@newyorker.com.
