The holidays were all in all pretty nice up in Chez Broad this year -- much better than last year, anyway, except when I got the news Christmas Day that TOG had to put down his self-proclaimed life's companion.

Mikiko was her show name, but TOG renamed her because he couldn't stand calling her that; she was so not a showdog. Instead, she was a crabby little ol' lady, not unlike her owner being a curmudgeonly ol' soul himself. She farted with abandon, snored louder than most guys and drooled. Man, did she drool. Drooled so much, she ruined a couple of TOG's mattresses ... well, actually, it was more like she licked them to death every time he would wash the sheets. None of that -- while hysterically funny, mind you -- encapsulated her overall demeanor, however, which TOG captured perfectly in his dry-as-dirt way:

She had her lighthearted moments, too, of course, like the morning after the giant multinetwork concert after 9/11. I'd spent the night at TOG's, and he took off for work and let me sleep. Tradition had it that every time I slept over, it was my job to take Mikiko for her morning constitutional, so I got up and dressed and there she was, staring at me like, "'k, can we go now, Sunshine? Thanks." So, I got the leash on her, and we walked to the beach they live near. Well, at the time, I was all fixated on nuclear and biological warfare and so on and so forth, and I remember thinking to myself as we walked to the water's edge that ohmigod, Lake Michigan could be wiped out with mere milliliters of some sort of toxin or deadly strain of something or other and holy shit, we're gonna die. And I look down, and there's Mikiko on her back, rolling around in the wet sand like "Yeah. Woooooo! It's a party going on down here! Wooo!" So I said to her, "You know, your dad's going to KILL me for letting you bring all this sand into the crib," but did she care? Not one bit. Then there was the time I was taking her for a walk, and we ran into this old guy with his equally old bloodhound, Max. Mikiko took one look at him and thought, "Ooooo, a MAN!" and started chasing Max around his owner until the poor bastard was tangled in both their leashes. I said to her, "Honey, boys don't like it when you chase them," to which she looked at me like, "Whatever," though Max' owner clearly wasn't happy about getting tangled up by the wily bulldog. Girlfriend could MOVE, too, when she wanted.

There was also the time I was over and was sleeping with my knees up for whatever reason, and she was with us on the bed like she always was. And all of a sudden I felt her sort of jumping on my knee, except then it occurred to me that she maybe hadn't been spayed and ... oh. My. Hmmmm. So I ask TOG the next day whether she had been spayed, and when he said, "No," I was like, "Oh. Well, because it seems that [Mikiko] was having a little party of her own on my knee last night," to which he said to her, "[Mikiko], what did the weird girl do to you?" because it was MY fault, naturally.

I'm not sure what makes me more sad, the fact that the world lost her or that TOG is hurting so badly; above all else, he loved that dog, and there's nothing I can do to make him feel better. And over fucking Christmas, too. God.