Apollo

I had always wondered what it would be like to have a dog but having recently graduated college, starting my career and living in my own place for the first time, I hadn’t yet given too much thought as to when or how I would get a dog for myself.

Luckily for me I had a wonderful coworker, Shreya, who had two Golden Retrievers and wanted me to get a dog more than I even wanted to get a dog myself. She was also very social and in-tune with other people in the office and she heard that another coworker on a different team, Venu, was giving up his dog Timmy. Between work and his kids’ extremely packed school and sports schedules, his family didn’t have enough bandwidth to continue giving Timmy the life a dog deserves. Having to leave home early in the morning and arrive home late some days, Timmy was at home bored most of the time and Venu felt like another person or family would be able to take better care of him.

Shreya asked me if I’d be interested in adopting Timmy. After learning what the situation was, and that he was a Chocolate Lab I said sure! After all, other than work I had no commitments, I had the space, I was making enough money to be able to afford caring for another living being, and I was only interested in getting a large-breed dog like a Lab, Golden Retreiver, or Doberman.

Initially, another coworker’s neighbor was interested in adopting Timmy. But Shreya was dead set on having me adopt this dog and single-handedly fought for me behind the scenes for the next 2 months to convince Venu to choose me.

Personally, I was relatively indifferent about the whole situation and was okay with whoever Venu decided to give Timmy to. I hadn’t met this dog, and I figured if he doesn’t choose me, there’s plenty of time to adopt another dog in the future.

In the end, all thanks to Shreya, Venu decided to allow me to adopt his dog. He mentioned to me that he had reservations about giving his dog to a “young bachelor” for fear that someone who’s single and in his early 20’s wouldn’t take good care of a dog but I think through Shreya’s convincing and getting to know me as an acquaintance he was reassured that I’m not the type of person to neglect a dog in favor of going out to clubs or throwing ragers at my condo.

I adopted Timmy on March 22nd, 2019. I met Venu at a dog park where we put all of the items such as his bed, food, bowls, medication, etc… in my car. He then called Timmy over, handed me the leash and we went our separate ways. I distinctly remember how Timmy didn’t look confused about what was happening. It seemed like he instinctively knew that I was his new owner and he was on board.

On the car ride home, I knew that the first thing that needed to happen was a name change… I was thinking either Atlas or Apollo, but Atlas felt like a name fit for a dog of a much larger stature, so Apollo it was!

When we got home, I remember putting him in my condo and then going out to retrieve his belongings from the car. He whined so loudly about being left alone in that new environment, but he quickly became very comfortable by himself in the next few days.

I had a roommate at the time, Jaclyn, who was working a late shift at her job and came home after I had already gone to bed. That first night, when Jaclyn came through the door, Apollo already had an instinct to defend his new home and barked at her, quickly realizing that not only was she not a threat, but she was a new friend that he would be living with for several months to come.

I brought him home on a Friday. I remember the Sunday, just 2 days later, I was out with him trying to chart a path for our daily walks when I ran into a man who was letting his dogs run off leash in a large open field next to my neighborhood. His name was Matt and he looked eerily similar to Joseph Gordon Levitt. He asked me if I ever let my dog off leash to run around. I replied “No, I haven’t. I just got him 2 days ago actually.” Matt invited me to let Apollo run around and play with his dogs off leash. I obliged thinking that if Apollo was playing with dogs who were already well behaved and staying in the area that he wouldn’t run off. Apollo played with his dogs so well, running around in circles, but staying near us the whole time. It was clear that he instinctively knew the boundaries of the field and not to run off. In hindsight, it was probably a terrible idea to let a dog that I barely know, who barely knows me, run around off leash in an area that I also barely know, but something about Matt’s reassuring but casual demeanor made me comfortable with it. Throughout the next few years, I’d take Apollo to this field many times to play fetch.

For the first 2 weeks of having Apollo, I was stressed. He didn’t understand what I wanted of him, I didn’t understand why he did certain things. I was concerned that I might have been in over my head. Luckily, it was just a short adjustment period and our expectations of each other began to synchronize.

He was still a puppy at this point and it would take about a year for him to shake off the habit of chewing up shoes, sandals, remotes and even a bottle of Aleve (dangerous!) but once he did it was smooth sailing from there!

As I got to know him, I started to notice some of his quirks.

Quirk 1: He was terrified of large vehicles, but it seemed as if there was an arbitrary line between what he deemed to be a “big, scary vehicle” and a “big, not-scary vehicle”.

• Garbage trucks, UPS/FedEx trucks? Obviously big, obviously scary.
• Ford F-150s or Chevy Tahoe’s? Big, but not scary.
• Amazon delivery vans? Kind of big, still scary.
• An equally sized personal Sprinter van? Kind of big, not scary.

To this day, after knowing him for more than 7 years I still do not understand the metrics by which he deemed a vehicle to be scary in that gray area between large personal vehicle and a work vehicle.

Quirk 2: He absolutely hated the act of putting a harness on over his head. If his harness was on but unbuckled, he would be frozen in place. However, once the harness was fastened, it’s like he didn’t even notice it. He got better about this over the years and by the time he was around 7 there was no issue getting his harness on, but in the early days I'd be chasing him around the house trying to get him to put it on.

Quirk 3: He had a fear of flies in the house. If he could hear and see a flying insect, you could count on the fact that he’d be hiding in the bathroom for the next couple of hours.

In October 2020, I adopted a kitten named Roger. Apollo and Roger immediately hit it off becoming friends. Even though Roger weighed about 4 pounds, and Apollo, 60, they were still able to interact and play together. Initially, Apollo would allow Roger into his personal space when he was laying in his bed, but as Roger got older, Apollo was much more territorial about his space when he was trying to rest and would growl at Roger, who was either trying to show love to Apollo, or annoy him. It’s hard to tell with cats…

2 months later in December 2020, I rescued another kitten from the cold named Sesame. Sesame and Apollo hardly interacted in the early years. Her personality was more so to sit back and observe what’s going on. Later on, Sesame would sometimes rub up against Apollo’s face to show her love, and he never, ever growled at her – I think because he could tell that her intentions were always pure.

In August of 2022 I moved to the Pike and Rose neighborhood of Rockville/North Bethesda, partially because there was a dog park there called Bark Social which I thought would be a fun and convenient way for him to get exercise and socialize with other dogs.

Turns out, he wasn’t as social as I had hoped he’d be. He would usually stay by my side or go around sniffing the edges of the facility, rather than interact with other dogs. Whenever he did interact, there was usually some form of humping involved, him being both the humper and humpee. And for whatever reason dogs would always, and I mean always, lick his privates. He did make a few real friends with other regulars that he recognized every time at Bark Social – a hound mix named Moose (shoutout Alex), and a Rottweiler named Leo.

Living at Pike and Rose though, he was noticeably more anxious on walks around the block being surrounded by delivery trucks, buses, construction and other big objects that make big noises.

During this time, he developed another quirk. I kept his water bowl in the bathroom because he would splash water while drinking. He developed a pavlovian response to start drinking water whenever I would use the restroom. It was a really strange behavior that in hindsight, I probably should have curbed…

In May 2025, I moved about 10 minutes away to a quiet, very dog friendly neighborhood next to Cabin John Regional Park, which allowed us to have access to hiking trails and open fields within a short walk again. Apollo was much more comfortable on walks in this neighborhood, and he was leading a very normal, healthy and routine life for about a year and a half.

In early August 2026, he started to show some unusual but not super concerning health signs. It started when he slipped on my plastic desk mat and had a slight limp coming from his left hip. I gave him a trazodone to help calm him down, let him rest, and not feel the urge to stand up any time I stood up from my desk. Later that night, he threw up some white foam and suddenly stopped having an appetite for the kibble that he’d been eating for his entire life. He also wheezed and coughed a few times during the night so I took him to the vet 2 days later to look at his hip. They gave him some medication for pain and a shot to help increase his appetite. His hip issue seemed to disappear very quickly, but his appetite for kibble still didn’t return. I switched him to a diet of chicken, rice and sweet potato which he happily ate, but I still tried to encourage him to eat kibble, thinking that he was just being picky…

He was showing these symptoms (vomiting, wheezing and loss of appetite) after the first time I ever gave him a trazodone, so in my mind I figured they were correlated and didn’t think too much of it – after all, he’s been very healthy for his entire life, and he’s vomited and coughed before “for no reason” and never had any issues at all.

A week later, I started to notice that the iris in his right eye was starting to darken from a bright yellow to a darker brown. I thought maybe this was part of the aging process where some dogs start to get that pale glassy look in their eyes – after all, he’s more than 8 years old, which is getting up there for a Chocolate Lab. However, the combination of lack of appetite and the eye color change did have me more concerned.

My concerns were solidified after I took him to a dog beach to play fetch and swim in deeper-than-leg-height water for the first time in his life. He seemed to love playing fetch, but his eye turned from a dark brown to a bright red the more energy he exerted. I could tell that something was wrong. Normally when playing fetch, you could see the joy on his face. This time it seemed like he was doing instinctually from being a water-retreiver breed, not because he was having a good time. When walking back to the car, and during the ride home he wasn’t happy-panting. He was stone cold stoic. In the 3 hours after arriving back home, every time he exhaled his whole body would twitch. I knew he had over-exerted himself and I felt it was time to go back to the vet to get his eye checked out and take X-Rays to look for any root causes of the eye and appetite issues.

The vet visit on August 25th did not go as expected – He was diagnosed with pulmonary metastatic neoplasia. Lung cancer. His eye had half the normal pressure due to a lack of oxygen. It wasn't allowing blood to flow out causing a buildup of blood cells which is why during exercise, his eye was bright red. The vet said he couldn’t give me any information about what stage the cancer was at, how much it had spread, or how much time Apollo had left but I could tell by the way he was talking and the sound of his voice that he might have been afraid to tell me the truth about just how bad the cancer actually was.

With this new diagnosis, I wanted to give Apollo as good and as comfortable of a life as I could, for as long as he had left. I gave him lots of treats, berries, fruit, chicken, rice, veggies, but as time went on, his breathing became more labored and his eye, even with medicated eye drops, was getting worse and worse. It began to recede into his skull and look diseased. On the night of August 30th, I went to pet his face and he squealed at the lightest brush over his eyelid and even squealed when I moved my chair near him because he was so afraid of his face being touched. That night I took him to the emergency vet where she looked at his lung X-Ray and said that based on the state of the Cancer, she wouldn’t be opposed to euthanasia right then and there if I so chose. I knew that Apollo still had some joy left in him and some good days ahead, but hearing that really made me spiral. Just 3 weeks earlier, he seemed to be a perfectly healthy dog and now I’m hearing that I will likely soon have to face the decision to euthanize him. It just didn’t feel real.

I put him on a 24/7 dose of Gabapentin and Prednisone to keep his pain low and comfort as high as possible. For the next few days he still had happiness watching me prepare his food, going out for walks, eating treats and the like… But slowly he would breathe harder, lose appetite for certain foods that he previously loved (peanut butter, banana, blueberries, etc…) I reduced his walks to just trips to the bathroom, and hand fed him meals to try to get him to eat as much as he could. On September 4th, his health plummeted to rock bottom. He lost pretty much all appetite, and was in an altered mental state. He didn’t respond to anything I said. His eyes would be fixated on nothing, staring into space. He would try to stand up as little as possible because it took too much energy. He stuck his neck out high to try to get as much air as he could. I knew that this was the point of no return, and scheduled an at-home euthanasia for the following day.

I didn’t sleep until 4am that night because I couldn’t bear the thought of falling asleep while he was fighting for his life to breathe. I genuinely thought, even wished that he would pass naturally that night to end the suffering. I was surprised to see that the next morning he was actually more lucid than the previous night. It didn't make sense to me because he wasn't able to sleep. How could he be in better shape? It didn’t matter. The writing was still on the wall. The degree of labored breathing was not something that he would be able to recover from. On the morning of September 5th, he ate 3 small pieces of chicken and one treat before finally refusing all food. He wouldn’t take any meds so his comfort levels would soon be unassisted by the Gabapentin. I took him out to pee, and for the first time in his life, he refused stairs. He knew that he was too tired to even try, so I carried him back up. Maya (his actual favorite person) asked if she could see him one last time to say goodbye. When she showed up, with what little energy he had left, he scurried to the door, tail wagging. Seeing his old friend for the first time in several months brought him the most happiness he’d been able to express in over a week.

Unfortunately the happiness was short lived, and he bounced in and out of a lucid state of mind with heavy pant-breathing for the next few hours. My friend Sasha, who I’d asked to be there with me during his final moments, showed up and we all comforted him, and each other while waiting for the vet to arrive.

The vet came at 7:30pm. She injected the initial sedative which was just supposed to relax him so that he would not be conscious during the final lethal injection. Apollo was so weak that he passed from the sedative alone at 8:00pm. The process was over and he was gone by 8:30.

I remember the first time I stepped foot in my house after helping load him on the stretcher into the vet’s van. It had a smell that I had never smelled before. It wasn’t good or bad, just different. Taking a shower that night, I missed how he would lay down at the bathroom door waiting for me. Going to bed that night, I missed seeing and hearing him plop down in one of his spots next to the bed and let out that deep sigh of relaxation – of finally getting to go to sleep. Waking up the next morning, I missed the excitement that he showed when I finally got out of bed because he knew he was going to get to go outside and eat his breakfast. Coming home, I miss him standing in the hallway with a stuffed animal in his mouth, greeting me from afar, excitedly tapping his feet back and forth waiting for me to approach him. There’s no more shifting when I roll my chair back – partially to avoid being rolled over, but partially as to excitedly say “What are we up to now dad?” There are no ambient breaths, movements, or random fights with Roger. There’s no more barking at noises imperceptible to the human ear. There’s no more panicked and frenzied state of trying to calm him down as soon as someone knocks on the door. There’s no one attentively watching me cook in the kitchen. There’s no more sense of responsibility to be home between 5 and 7pm to take him out for a walk and feed him his dinner. You never really think about the subtleties of how a dog breathes life into the household. Without him, the house feels empty and cold.

I read stories of pets getting cancer. Some manage to live several years after the diagnosis, some lived only 2-3 months. I thought to myself “Wow, 2-3 months is not a long time, I hope I get more than that with Apollo.” Oh, how cruel the world is that he and I only had 11 more days post-diagnosis. I tried to make them as good as possible and filled with joy for him, but what hurts along with losing him is knowing that he didn’t understand what was happening to him. Hell, I didn't understand what was happening to him. He didn’t get to experience aging gracefully or slowing down for any reason at all. He was slammed into a brick wall and suddenly and inexplicably was unable to do the things that he enjoyed.

Apollo was an incredibly good boy. He was always very well behaved, never had any major issues with brushing, having his nails trimmed, or taking baths. He didn’t have a malicious bone in his body and was a good sibling to Roger and Sesame. He was quirky, silly, weird and truly one of a kind. He embraced friends and always remembered them even if he hadn’t seen them in a long time. He was taken from this world far too soon.

If you have pets, give them extra treats and hugs on behalf of, and in memory of Apollo.