Meet Grover, My Late Airedale…

Grover was my fifth Airedale and my first boy. He had one of those personalities that take you by storm and charm you all the way. Sweet, funny, mischievous, and completely in love with his dog mom.

He could light up a room just by walking into it… tail wagging, smiling, fully committed to his energetic entrance. If you've ever met or read about Fleetwood, you have a pretty good idea of what Grover brought to a room. As a matter of fact, Fleetwood should probably be flattered by that comparison.

He was also, as you can see, not remotely opposed to mud 😅

The Saturday Morning That Changed Things Forever

It was early on a Saturday morning in 2015 when I felt a well-defined lump on Grover's neck. Not a fatty cyst. Sometimes you just know when something isn't right.

We were at the vet within a few hours to have it aspirated. It was the best we could do on a weekend, and honestly, it was a beautiful day and the dogs, Halo, Cherry, and Grover, were full of energy and up to their usual nonsense… so it was still a good day.

We then went home and waited for the results on Monday.

Then came The Call.

I vividly remember the vet's office calling with the lab results. Canine lymphoma.

Let me tell you, it can take several calls before that kind of information actually sinks in. I'm not hard of hearing, but I asked them to repeat the diagnosis more times than I'd like to admit. It felt like an out-of-body experience. You know all the words being said to you. There's no inside voice for that conversation.

I ended up calling back every ten minutes. Finally, I just said, "Look, I'm not usually this slow, but can you say that one more time?"

I knew dogs got cancer. I owned a breed prone to it. I'd had several Airedales. And yet I was completely blindsided. Age six. My youngest.

Lymphoma, in my opinion, is the mother of all canine cancers.

After all the calls and all the communication, one thing became very clear: my dog needed an oncologist and I needed a cocktail. I had a cocktail by 5. Grover had an oncology appointment the next day.

The Fight

Forty-eight hours later we were at the cancer center learning about treatment options.

Grover had Stage 1 B-cell lymphoma which was the more treatable kind. I remember sitting there genuinely relieved that my dog had "good" lymphoma, which is a sentence I never expected to think. We started on the Wisconsin Protocol and our adventure began.

There were hard weeks and good weeks. Setbacks and adjustments. A lot of calls to the doctor, a lot of notes, a lot of canned chicken, which, for the record, is basically crack for dogs and I cannot recommend it highly enough if your dog needs to gain weight. Grover went into remission at age seven. We celebrated properly.

Then the cancer came back. We fought again. Switched protocols. And then something happened that his own doctors didn't have a playbook for… Grover went into remission a second time, on a rescue drug that most dogs don't survive six months on.

His doctor came out to the waiting room to tell me. Lobby news, which meant it couldn't be bad. "We believe Grover is in remission and we're recommending we stop chemo."

I stood there trying to figure out if we'd somehow crossed into a parallel universe on the way to his checkup. Grover was, officially, a rock star.

The Inevitable

The cancer came back a third time. And this time, Grover stopped responding to treatment.

I listened to his doctors. I listened to everyone. And then I looked at Grover, and my heart made the call.

We said goodbye surrounded by family, friends, and every member of the staff who had cared for him. I held his paws, smooched his nose, and wished him much love and luck. The hard part about a new journey is that it puts you on different paths. Grover and I were both very sure our paths would cross again.

We moved forward one paw at a time.

What Came From It

While we were going through treatment, I looked for something to read that felt human. Honest. Warm. Maybe even a little funny, because sometimes that's the only thing that gets you through times like this. I couldn't find it. So, I wrote it.

A Watch(ed) Dog Never Boils is the book Grover and I created together. The good, the funny, the bad, and the ugly, all of it. My goal was to give other dog owners a resource that felt like it came from someone who had actually lived it, not a clinical pamphlet.

Here's a thing about me that might surprise you: I graduated from the University of Florida with a degree in Fine Arts, concentration in Art History.

So, when it came time to illustrate the book, I designed every illustration myself. I worked with a professional illustrator to make them publication-ready, but the creative vision was mine. Those illustrations are now the foundation of every Happy Aire product, including the collars, the leashes, the tees. Grover is in all of it.

And ten percent of every Happy Aire sale goes back to the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine's oncology program. Florida is my school. Their veterinary program is exceptional, and one of the things I love about giving back through them is that you can direct exactly where your donation goes.

Ours goes to oncology. It goes to the research that might change the outcome for someone else's dog.

That's who Grover was. That's why Happy Aire exists. And that's why every single thing we make means a little more than just a nice leash or a cute tee.

Thank you for being here. I'm so glad you know him now.

-Kim Opdyke

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