Marlin ‘Pig’ Wilson
Marlin ‘Pig’ Wilson
Unknown – December 4, 2022
This eulogy and chronicle is for anyone who has never known what it is like to adopt and love a senior dog. While I do not truly know how old my Marlin was, I wrote this for my own personal peace of mind and healing but also to help inspire anyone who is on the fence about adopting a dog that has a couple more ticks on the old odometer than an 8-month-old puppy. Senior dogs are one of the greatest blessings in life and their appreciation runs deeper than that of any average shelter pet. I hope the story of my Marlin & I will inspire and challenge you to not let a little white on a dog’s face keep you from looking their way. Without further ado…
The date was March 27, 2020. That day will always be one of the greatest days of my life. My life changed forever from the first moment I saw you. My good friend Lauren Pendleton helped orchestrate our meeting when she told me to look at ACT Fresno’s website after I told her that I was looking for a new best friend. I saw you on there and couldn’t stop smiling. My mom & I drove down to meet you and it was love at first sight for me. Your sweet, gentle demeanor instantly crawled its way into my heart. I owe my friend Lauren the deepest debt of gratitude for what she helped me find in my Marlin.
When I first got Marlin, his name was Scooby and I did not like that at all. I never felt it fit his looks or personality. I knew I was going to change it but during that time, I considered a handful of names. He was such a sweet, gentle boy and while he was not a senior, he certainly was not a puppy either so I considered traditional older gentlemen names like Walt, Clint, Doc, Pop, you get the idea. I’ve always loved the Miami Marlins and I felt that Marlin fit him perfectly because it had such an old-fashioned, charming sound to it. It took him under three weeks to learn his new name and everyone used to tell me they thought it fit him perfectly and that he looked like a Marlin. A lot of people have asked me over the last few years why I call him pig. When he was just settling in at home with me, I began to give him dessert sticks that helped clean his teeth and whenever he would open his mouth to take it from me and start eating, he would make snorting sounds that sounded like a pig so one time, I called him Marlin Pig and that stuck like a magnet. I never stopped! About a year into our time together, I also started to call him “my sweetie” because of his personality so I was always referring to him with one of those two at home.
Marlin faced tragedy and adversity before I found him. His original owner was an older man in Fresno, California who had passed away tragically and Marlin & his sister ended up being put up for adoption at ACT by extended family. Marlin’s sister was adopted almost immediately but he wasn’t. Marlin was there for a week before my new friend, Lisa Husak, and her wonderful family fostered him. They had my Marlin for about a week before I found him on ACT’s website and asked to have him pulled from foster care so I could adopt him. I fell in love hard instantly. I was dealing with the horrible anxiety and sleep-deprivation associated with early Covid-19 uncertainty and Marlin brought a calm, stable presence and unconditional love to my life that I had never felt before and needed more than ever.
I always felt so selfish at the time saying this but 2020 was truly one of the best years of my life and my Marlin was at the forefront of why. I felt completely hopeless and helpless and did not want to get out of bed when Covid-19 first hit. Marlin made me excited to get up in the morning. Every morning would begin with him jumping into bed with me and snuggling for a while until we felt like getting up. Living in Discovery Bay, we spent a lot of time at our local Cornell Park, walking the neighborhoods, sunbathing on our deck and enjoying the family ski boat. We had so many firsts during 2020. Marlin had never been in a bedroom before. He grew up sleeping on a couch so he was terrified the first time I tried to get him to walk through the doorway into my room. We conquered that in about two nights. After that, it was the stairs. He had never seen anything quite like the stairs that greet guests right when you step in our front door and for a while, it required his leash being on to get him to climb them but we got through that too. Next on the list was getting him into our boat for the first time. He was nervous and cautious but once he sat down in it and watched us moving through the Delta, he never wanted to get out. He and I would always sit together in the front of the boat and people in passing boats often admired his calm, relaxed demeanor.
By summer 2020, I realized that Marlin had never been taught how to swim so I taught him in my grandmother’s pool. Being half Golden Retriever and half Pitbull, he was a natural! It scared him at first but his strokes were long and easy and he did great. After that, we took him to Ski Beach all the time and he enjoyed jumping out of the boat and into the shallow water where he would often lie down. He made friends so easily everywhere we went and it’s hard to recall them all from memory but a few of his favorites included his vet, Dr. Doug Gray of Discovery Bay, Jamie & her team at Shear Canine Grooming of Brentwood, Deontay and the great folks of Pet Food Express in Brentwood, and basically anyone we would encounter at the park. One of the most difficult days in 2020 was my mom’s birthday on July 9th. I could tell Marlin had never had his teeth cleaned before so I made him an appointment with Dr. Gray and because he had so much build-up in his gums, they had to sedate him to get in there and clean adequately. He looked so much younger after this procedure but I was worried to death about him all day. I hated that they had to put him under and I hated even more that they had to shave a spot on one of his front legs for the sedative. He went at it for several weeks after because it itched him so much as the skin was healing. After this, I always made sure Marlin’s teeth were brushed when he went to the groomers and I’m proud to say they never had plaque build-up again.
2021 was much of the same until I met my now fiancée that August. When I moved in with her right across the street, Marlin was so excited to see his family grow! He now had two French bulldog brothers, a mom and two kids to play with. We were bonded from day one but there was plenty of room in Marlin’s heart to include a few more.
In early 2022, he & I were both sad to say goodbye to our native California but we packed up with our new family and drove to my fiancee’s native Louisiana. It was quite an experience driving over 2,000 miles with 2 kids and 3 dogs but Marlin was an angel the entire trip, as you’d expect if you had the honor of knowing him. He really enjoyed Arizona in particular and shared my excitement in Mesa when I got to walk him around the grounds of my beloved Oakland A’s Hohokam Stadium. Once in Louisiana, Marlin tried to acclimate to the intense humidity but like me, was never a big fan. Just like in Discovery Bay, we would do our walks at night when it was a bit cooler and come home to the comfort of cold water & air conditioning.
I celebrated three of my birthdays with Marlin, the most recent being last Saturday when I turned 30. I got the suspicion that he didn’t feel great on Saturday morning but he still happily shook my hand while lying down, a daily tradition of his. On Sunday morning, I was leaving for the Pelicans game and taking Marlin out to go to the bathroom. He stumbled in the front yard and was walking very gingerly back into the house. When he got to his bed, he sort of just collapsed onto his side and wasn’t really moving. My fiancée is a vet tech and she grabbed her stethoscope and was very alarmed when she could not hear his heartbeat. We quickly carried his bed outside with him in it and set it down in the driveway. He stood up on his own but was scared to walk and just sort of froze. We got him in the car and took him to an emergency vet as quickly as possible. When the vet came into the room, she told us that he had a lot of fluid right around his heart that turned out to be blood. Marlin had a tumor right next to his heart and when they tapped his heart, the fluid immediately filled up again. I asked her what I could do to make him more comfortable after this; I already gave him the best food, vitamins and bottled water every day. Despite my begging, she very sadly told me that he would not be able to go home again because she could not promise that it would not get much worse and that he may not make it through the night and she would not want me to find him. I had to make the hardest decision of my life. I did not want my Marlin Pig to be in pain anymore so I spent a few hours on the floor with him saying my good-byes and feeding him two sausages, three donuts and a pack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups that the staff gave to me as a last meal for him. His eyes were glowing when he tried Reese’s and I smiled at him through my tears, hugged him, and said, “I’m glad you got to experience my favorite candy once”. I lost my grandfather and uncle young and was devastated with both but my uncle in particular was a big animal lover so I sat on the ground showing Marlin pictures of them both, explaining that they would be waiting for him when he got to the rainbow bridge. I told him I loved him with my entire heart and that I was so sorry that he went through this. I thanked him for being the best friend I have ever had and told him how honored I felt to be his dad.
Because I never truly knew Marlin’s age, I was very protective of him from day one. He had a blonde face and chest as well as his paws. There was absolutely nothing I hated more than when we would be somewhere and a person would say, “aw, look at the old man” and I would always try to gently point out that it was actually blonde, not gray. My Marlin never had a gray hair on him, not even on his last day here. I would have truly done anything for my boy and I tried to show him that in every way possible. If you know the Delta, you’ve probably at least heard of Union Point. It’s a restaurant you can drive up to in your boat, hop out and go eat out on their deck. Well, because their dock is painted, it gets hotter than hell in the middle of summer, easily over 100 degrees. It was June 2020 and my mom, Marlin & I went to lunch there one day. I had accidentally forgotten my sandals back at home that day so when lunch ended and we had to walk back to the boat, I noticed that the dock was again, hotter than anything. I picked all 78 pounds of Marlin up and ran, bare footed, 200 yards to our boat. I tossed him onto the back seat and dove straight into the water. Both of my feet were bleeding and severely burned. I had to go to the doctor for it. I could not walk barefoot for over a month after that. A couple who was sitting on a boat nearby saw what had happened and just said, “that’s a good dog dad” and I responded with, “better me than him. I would never want my boy in any pain” and I would do that again right now in a heartbeat if I had to.
Everyone always tells me how lucky Marlin was to have ended up with me and that I gave him a second chance at life. That may be true because he was in emotional dire straits when I met him after losing his original owner then being in a shelter briefly before being fostered but make no mistake, I was the lucky one. I’ve truly never met a dog like Marlin. He was so independent and self-sufficient, yet he came to me for everything. I realize now more than ever that he did this because of how much he loved me and how much he could feel that I loved him. I always joked with people that as long as Marlin had a big bowl of food and a warm place to sleep, he’d be more than content but the truth is, he was my security as much as I was his. We counted on each other. We depended on each other to get through each day. We brought joy, laughter, love and happiness to each other and when we made eye contact, there was just a mutual love that ran deeper than anything I’ve ever felt with another living creature.
I learned so much about life from my Marlin. I know that may sound funny because he could not speak but I really did. He taught me about forgiveness. He taught me about loyalty and sticking by someone when they were in a time of need. He taught me how to be calm and relax. He matured me and he made me a better, more responsible person. He helped me see beauty in the simple things in life and taught me how to slow down, take a break and smell the roses. Most importantly, he taught me the power of unconditional love and he showed me what it felt like to give and receive it. It’s a powerful feeling. It’s why my heart is completely broken right now and will never fully heal from this tragedy. I had Marlin through an unprecedented global pandemic, California wildfires that threatened the entire state at one point, social unrest that resembled an impending Civil War and many other obstacles. Through it all, he never wavered. If I so much as sat down hard in a chair because I was tired, stressed or upset about something, he would literally wake up out of a sound napping sleep and come over to me and just sort of sit at my feet staring at me. I didn’t have to say anything for him to know I was upset; we were that bonded. He could just feel it and did everything in his power to comfort me. I was the same way with him; if I knew my sweet pig was sad or hurting for any reason, I did not ever want to leave his side and would lay on the floor with him for as long as it took until I could see he was feeling happy once again.
I chronicled a lot of Marlin’s adventures on his Instagram, @rescuemarlin but there were a million more and not all were pictured. I’ve truly never encountered another animal like Marlin in my entire life. I genuinely believe he was the reincarnated spirit of a sweet human being because he loved making extended eye contact with me when I would sit and talk with him and he felt my pain the way you’d only think a human who had been through something could have. I had Marlin for exactly 982 days and I did not take one of them for granted. I would have given absolutely anything for more time with him. Marlin was my best friend and our souls were/are connected. My very good friend, Ritz, is designing a special tattoo for me with Marlin’s real paw print that I can’t wait to show everyone once it is finished. He is being cremated and will be with me forever.
My sweet pig, I hope reading all of this made you smile down from above. I love you with all of my heart. I miss you more than I can possibly put into words and I’m truly counting down the minutes until we see each other again. I love you more than you will ever know and I will see you soon.