Toby.

My friends and long-abandoned readers,

I come to you with a heavy heart and the sad news that the only canine member of the O-House has gone home to be with Jesus. Rest In Peace to the beautiful, loyal, chillest-dog-you-ever-met, Toby.

As if life in the O-House weren’t great enough, one day a dog appeared. And by that I mean that Syd brought him back to Manhattan with her. (The amount of communication between house members regarding this decision is up for debate.) One fact remains, we will forever owe the Miller family a debt of gratitude for making our O-House family complete. 

Some of the O-Housers were more excited than others, as evidenced by this picture.  (Ahem, Keira.)

But in the end, hearts were won and life-long attachments formed. Toby never got in anyone’s bed uninvited, never barked incessantly (to my recollection), and only once devoured an entire plate of cookies that was carelessly left on the coffee table.

Toby never caused any house drama, save the time he “disappeared” and sent the O-Housers on a panic-fueled drive around Manhattan. For more on that story, see here.

If Toby had any shortcoming, it was that he was perhaps not a great exercise partner. There was the time Syd took him on a bike ride and he bolted after a squirrel, sending Syd flying over the handlebars. There were the times that this author took Toby on runs around city park, and he wanted to sprint the first mile, poop as far away as possible from one of the pet “waste disposal” stations, and then crawl home at a leisurely pace. 

But in all other respects, he was the. perfect. dog.

As I looked through the pictures that Syd sent for this blog post, I thought to myself, how was Toby not a model? There isn’t a picture where he isn’t posing perfectly, radiating a sort of regal handsomeness. He definitely could have been the poster dog for 1-800 Pet Meds, or even the Martha Stewart Dog Collection. Look at him killing it in that bandana:

O-House crushes came and went (or in some cases stayed, if you count the ones who got married). But the only boy constant in our lives and hearts was Toby. Despite being part of a shared custody arrangement between various Millers (the specifics of which I could never quite figure out) he made it into a surprising number of O-House pictures, and even joined us for post-college reunions.

Toby, there are few dogs loved so deeply by so many.  Miss you.