I don’t have much to say about 2023, other than for myself it was much worse than my 2022. This was mainly because in late September, I lost my beloved husky, Artemis. I don’t particularly like writing personal things—they tend to put a damper on making shallow, sarcastic, fairly obvious remarks. But having been asked to write something here, I’ll pay a short tribute to a legend.
Arty lived for 13 years and six days (81 in human years to the best of my research), and if my future brother-in-law hadn’t happened to talk to a husky breeder in 2010 about having trouble giving away a puppy with one ear (his mother stepped on it, breaking the cartilage) he never would’ve been in our lives.
A few years later in the wake of my dad passing away, I ended up going to noted Toronto bar, “2Cats,” where a friend of mine was intimately involved with the bartender. After getting fed shots I woke up on a stretcher at St. Mike’s Hospital. As a result of this, my wife was not pleased. But when Arty immediately licked my face when I got home, I knew he was my best friend.
Over his 13 years, Arty had all kinds of health scares, from seizures (apparently common in Siberian Huskies) to liver problems to skin infections. Yet for almost a decade and a half—a significant chunk of our lives—he always bounced back, sometimes miraculously. The boundless physical energy he had as a youngster, when I would take him on 20-kilometre walks, gradually tempered due to arthritis in his hips. In the years that followed I would drive him around Toronto trying to find different parks that could keep his attention for more than ten minutes. Along the way I started recording myself making non-sequitur remarks to him, footage that can still be found on Instagram or TikTok.
Look, in the grand scheme of things it’s easy to shrug off the death of an animal, especially one that owing to our privileged circumstances was able to live and eat better than many people on this lugubrious planet. But animals can be —and should be —a big part of our families, and when you had a room-filling, oft-drama-king-like presence like this guy, the void left is real and lasting.
In the months leading up to his death, his health noticeably deteriorated. After a particularly terrible stretch in September we had to make a brutal decision. I know we did what was right for him, but to this day I can’t shake taking him somewhere and not bringing him home. I don’t recommend losing your best friend in these early stages of dystopia, but we fight on, I guess. What the hell do I do with this windshield iPhone bracket now?
________
This probably isn’t the best week ahead for hard-hitting viewing, what with bowl games, world junior hockey, NFL and NBA distractions abound. But if you are looking for something salient regarding the road to the current Middle East situation, I highly recommend PBS Frontline’s “Netanyahu at War” from 2016. There is a more recent Frontline episode on the same topic, but this is a necessary prequel. The entire episode cannot be found on YouTube, but I discovered about a year ago you can download the PBS Buffalo app for free and view their extensive library.
Happy holidays.
