Noble Magnifico
October 6, 2008 - January 12, 2024
After some of the best years, I’m having to write a post that I never wanted to but knew I would have to one day.
Yesterday afternoon Joel Magnifico, Gabby and I had to say Goodbye to our beloved Noble. When I heard Noble’s story and saw his picture, I fell in love with him immediately. Joel, wanting a “fast dog” took a little convincing but he agreed (and would come to love Noble just as much as I did), and we brought him home September 6th, 2019.
Never having lived in a house and having a very colored past, our first few days with Noble were full of new things and experiences for all of us. A bbq in the backyard where he stole a steak off our plates, snacked on vegetables and strawberries from the garden, broke in new dog beds and went for walks around the neighborhood. Sleep was elusive for a few days but we finally all settled in to our new family dynamic and Noble thrived more than anyone expected him to. We set him up for success by pre-emptively getting belly bands and signing up for training because you can in fact teach an old dog new tricks (especially when their love language is food like Noble’s was). We tried crate training but turns out that life wasn’t for Noble. He wanted to be as close to his humans as possible and we weren’t complaining… even though it meant upgrading to a king size bed.
Luckily, 6 months after adopting Noble, I was able to work from home for the better part of 2 years and he was my constant companion. He LOVED sleeping in and would lay on the bed, look for me through the door and go back to sleep when he saw I was still there. We ate lunch together everyday, I would talk to him throughout the day and use him as a sounding board for pretty much everything. Everyday we would go for a morning walk around the block, sometimes mid-day walks depending how work was going for me and he could always count on our evening walks with dad, taking different routes and meeting the other people and dogs around Transcona.
One joy we all share in our house is food. It’s no secret that Noble was the biggest fan of all things food related. We have now amassed a very large album of pictures and videos (a lot of them in slow motion because they’re the best) of Noble eating different things. Everything from a quarter of a watermelon, sushi rolls off of chopsticks, having salami thrown as a frisbee, and whipped cream being sprayed into his mouth… he tried and loved it all. Noble loved food so much that I had to start making our own treats in a dehydrator to afford to feed this food loving pup of ours and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
We warded off his arthritis as best we could but eventually our walks grew shorter and shorter, ending with me being gifted a wagon for my birthday so we could take him for walks and when his joints couldn’t keep up, we would pull him around. He didn’t get the memo that he shouldn’t jump out of the moving wagon so we had to keep an eye out for his escape routes.
He was a main player in our engagement (Joel argues it’s the only reason I said yes, but I guess we’ll never know!), front and centre to our small Covid wedding, our large reception post Covid, pregnancy announcement and photoshoot as well as every other notable and average moment in our lives. Getting into the paint tray and tracking green footprints across the basement (still under the flooring in the basement and will never be covered in the storage room), getting dressed up in his pj’s, parka and boots for walks in the winter or rain jacket when it was raining, he had a little tap dance he did whenever he would get excited, being the best foster brother to Summer and Starke, and being so alarmed when his face was bright red only to find him eating the strawberries right off the plants in the garden are just a few memories we’ve made together throughout the years.
He was the absolute best big brother to Gabby, being there for the midnight wake ups, the laughs, and the tears. He learnt so quickly that babies meant food and you could always count on him to clean up after Gabby. They were two peas in a pod and where Gabby was, Noble was… inevitably getting fed everything from apple sauce, to digestive cookies, to her dinner.
We had just celebrated Noble’s 15th birthday on October 6th (which was always celebrated with a Big Mac, with no onions obviously) and knew it was most likely the last birthday we would have with him. Noble’s health had been slowly declining for a while, he was losing control of bodily functions, couldn’t walk by himself and you could tell he was in pain. We spent the week with him getting visits from people who loved him, getting all the treats, and we made a full turkey dinner with all the trimmings. We said goodbye to him at home, on his bed surrounded by love with a belly full of turkey, homemade lasagne and treats.
We are thankful for the time we got with him and will never forget all the lessons he taught us… most notably no matter how awful you are treated, it doesn’t have to change your character. He had every reason to have a chip on his shoulder and amazingly, he loved everyone.
When Noble found us, we knew we wouldn’t have as much time with him as some, but somehow we fit 15 years of love in a short 4 years 3 months. No amount of time would have been enough. There is now a large Noble shaped hole in our lives that will never be filled.
It is not a Goodbye forever, just a see you later… but damn does it hurt.
