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What the life, and death, of my 10-pound chihuahua taught me about living

December 10, 2025

[Editor’s note: This essay first appeared in the “Chapters of Our Lives” issue of PREMIUM Magazine, which featured personal storytelling.]

My 16-year-old chihuahua, Nacho, died a few weeks ago. Technically, he wasn’t even my dog, at least not according to Los Angeles County. My girlfriend, Nico, found him before we met. But after years of living together, feeding him, walking him, sharing our bed, he became mine too.

It doesn’t matter if you raise a dog from puppyhood or inherit one late in life. When that little creature dies, you know in your bones whether it was yours.

***

Death and I go way back. Friends, family, co-workers, strangers. A cousin in a V8 Gremlin on a stock car track. A 19-year-old friend whose heart gave out after too many energy drinks. A biker who somehow survived every drunk-driving crash but died while drunk diving, as if his death card had a typo on it. For decades, death was always in the frame — sometimes absurd, sometimes cruel. I feel like I’ve seen every Crayola of death in the 64-color box.

But this was my first dead dog.

People dying, I can accept that as the circle of life. But the death of a dog feels cosmically off. Shouldn’t they live as long as we do? Wouldn’t it make more sense if the puppy you got as a kid stayed with you your whole life? I mean, Greenland sharks can live up to 500 years — there may be one out there right now swimming in the dark Arctic waters that’s older than the Taj Mahal. And yet Nacho only got 16 years — which, granted, was a good run even for this breed that lives longer than other dogs on average.

Still, it doesn’t feel like that’s long enough.

***

I came to Nacho with my own collection of dents and scratches. I’m on the autism spectrum, carry some PTSD from violent teenage years, and spent 15 years in the spiral of addiction, trying to self-medicate both.

When I was four, I taught myself to read and often wandered off, sometimes miles from home, just to find comic books. Growing up in a small town saved me; someone would eventually see me reading “Savage Sword of Conan” at Kroger and drive me back. I always knew something was “off” about me, but I didn’t have the words for it, and that made me desperate to find a group I fit in with. I’m only mentioning this so you understand the next part.

At 14, I left home, joined a cult in a big city, and stayed two years. At 17, I found alcohol. Two beers and suddenly nothing felt wrong anymore. By 19, I was riding shotgun for a coke dealer in Los Angeles, thinking I’d found my place in the world.

By 32, I was at a funeral for my roommate who was done in by a staph infection, common among drug users. Standing over that coffin, I realized I’d spent half my life trying not to feel anything. The next day I called for help, went to a 12-step meeting, and haven’t had a drink or a drug since.

***

Caring for a 10-pound dog that loved me without condition turned out to be the best therapy I’ve ever had. The 12-step meetings saved my life, but Nacho helped me live it.

People will recommend all kinds of treatments like therapy, exercise, journaling. Yet nothing steadies me like the warm weight of a small dog in my arms. When my thoughts start spinning toward regret or fear about money, work, love, or the Apocalypse, I would pick up Nacho and the noise stopped.

"Missing Nacho" illustration by Jeff Goertzen. (Credit Jeff Goertzen) — “Missing Nacho” illustration by Jeff Goertzen. (Credit Jeff Goertzen)

A dog creates a “temporary autonomous zone” around itself. The term comes from Hakim Bey’s thesis on anarchism, which I’m still not sure if I understand. But when you’re in your home with a dog, the outside world doesn’t really matter as much as the needs of the dog. The dog’s presence creates a very small reality that extends to the boundaries of its needs. The mistakes of your past are only theory, while the emptiness of your dog’s bowl is a reality to be altered, right now. The anxieties of your future are needless emotional mechanisms when someone needs a belly rub or walkies. A dog doesn’t care about your past or your future. Dogs are the now of your life.

One morning, in the middle of the pandemic, while lying in bed, my mind spiraled into a panic. I thought, what if it only gets worse? What if there are food shortages?

What if crime increases? What if someone breaks into the house?

Nacho climbed onto my chest, looked me straight in the eye, and sneezed in my face.

It snapped me right out of it.

I got up, took him outside, fed him breakfast.

Good boy.

***

We still have Luna, a 70-pound pittie adopted from Angel City Pit Bulls. She’s the physical opposite of Nacho, built like an Olympic swimmer with the personality of a toddler. She hates the mailman, tolerates the cat next door, and insists on being covered with a blanket when the temperature drops below 72 degrees.

The first morning without Nacho, when I only filled one bowl, she looked at the empty one and back at me before eating her own breakfast.

She was always an emotional dog, but when she realized Nacho wasn’t coming back home, she became a different girl. It’s like she knows all the dog duties Nacho had and is trying to fulfill them. Not only did she keep her old job of protecting the perimeter of the house and yard, she picked up her new one of emotional support.

When Nacho died, I was terrified that all the anxiety and fear he’d kept at bay for years would come rushing back like water through a burst dam, as if Nacho had been some kind of bristly beige bank where I deposited negative emotions. But when he was gone, none of it returned.

I realized he hadn’t been holding on to my pain. He’d sent it away.

That’s my gratitude to the little guy: he took so many of my jagged feelings and, in return, asked for nothing but my presence.

Good boy.

***

Long before Nico and I met, she spotted a wire pen of adoptable puppies outside Nate’s Rare Guitars in Tarzana. One of them — tan, big-eyed, clearly plotting — was promised to another family. She left her number just in case.

A few days later, she got the call. The first family had returned him. No reason given. She liked to believe Nacho had staged a rebellion to get back to her.

He stayed by her side through a divorce, a move, and all the chaos that comes with starting over. When she and I started dating, she was surprised by how quickly he took to me.

“You’re in,” my friends said. Turns out dogs are better matchmakers than any dating apps.

Good boy.

***

There’s a part of my life I never know how to explain: I compete in kettlebell sport, a Russian discipline that’s obscure even among weightlifters. At big expos like the Arnold Sports Festival, we’re tucked in next to the Foosball championships.

Once, at a meet in California, a few Russian athletes joined us. They were our rock stars. Imagine if you lived in a country where few know what basketball is, where there are maybe a dozen courts total, and then an NBA All-Star team shows up and does a shootaround with you. That’s what it was like.

We peppered them with questions — training routines, diets, recovery secrets. One of them said, in broken English: “Eat the same thing every day, like dog.”

The way he said “like dog” carried the implication that if a dog’s doing it, it must be a good idea. The phrase stuck with me for years. It became my shorthand for how I want to live.

Wake up happy, like dog.

Love my people with all my heart, like dog.

Be content with what I have, like dog.

Think of a dog’s life. A dog’s life is beautifully small. It meets a handful of humans and loves them all. Its world stretches as far as the front door and wherever the leash reaches, and yet that world is full of wonder and the scents of others.

Think of a dog’s wants. A dog wants to be fed, and loved, and a good place to sleep — and really, these are the only things I need in my own life. But yet I worry about my IRA, about my dental work, and the vagaries of my writing career. When I’m told a book I need at the library is missing, I take it personally, as if someone stole it just to ruin my weekend’s research. I can get so wound up about how someone treats me in traffic, or the store being out of eggs, that I can’t remember the fact that I do have everything I need in my life.

I have a life partner, a handful of close friends, and a social group I enjoy. I live in a nice house in a good neighborhood. I have a small garage gym for working out. I’m creatively inspired and writing what I hope will be my best book yet. If I can learn anything from a dog, it’s the absolute bliss of being content with what I have. A sense of enough.

Good boy forever.

Forever good boy.

What the life, and death, of my 10-pound chihuahua taught me about living Orange County Register

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What the life, and death, of my 10-pound chihuahua taught me about living

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