Saying goodbye to a loved (and hated) dog is a family affair.

It was spring 2015 and I was sitting in my office at the Weekly when my cell phone rang.

“Hey, uh, this is kind of weird,” the caller said, “but your dog is down at the Cherry Bean.”

“Yeah and?” I responded. “My husband and I walk him down there all the time.”

No, the caller said. Your dog is down here on his own.

So it was that I found out my Jack Russell terrier, Oliver, had escaped through a hole in the fence of our Oldtown Salinas backyard and trotted across not one, not two but three very busy streets, following the route we normally took when we went to fetch coffee from our go-to place. He walked in, someone recognized him, got the phone number off his tag and made the call.

I called my husband. “Where’s Oliver?” I asked. “Probably in the yard,” he said. “Nope,” I said. “He’s at the Cherry Bean. Go get him.”

Oliver was well into post-middle age in 2015, but in his cold little heart, he was still the consummate escape artist he had been since he was young. His ability to make a run for it is how he ended up with us. A friend found him loose on Pesante Road, on multiple occasions, and each time the friend returned him to his owners, the owners said, “We do not want him back.” He was about 3, by a veterinarian’s estimate, when my friend took the owner’s message seriously and asked if we wanted a dog.

Many of the things that people might consider enjoyable were the things that Oliver despised: wind blowing through trees, the sound of children’s laughter, the moving wheels of a bicyclist. Mail delivery especially enraged him. At one house, mail came through a slot in the front door: Oliver would seize it, furiously shake it while it was clamped in his teeth and, sometimes, pee on it.

What he loved was food. My food, your food, anyone’s food. A friend slipped him so much turkey one Thanksgiving that Oliver ended up at the vet, with an inflamed spleen. He took a few days off from begging after that.

For the past few years, it was clear Oliver was living on borrowed time. He could no longer spring up onto the bed. He stopped being able to climb up or down stairs. His movements became stiff. But still, he enjoyed a good meal and that became our mantra: As long as he still wanted to eat, he still wanted to live.

Last December, he began telling us that was no longer the case. He would sniff his food and turn away. He ignored special treats like bacon. Covid rules would have prevented the veterinarian’s office from letting us all in, so I found Dr. Maria Kuty, a vet in Santa Cruz who made end-of-life house calls.

She came on a Friday morning. Oliver was neither afraid nor in pain, and all of us – our sons and two special friends – were touching him when he went at the age of almost 21.

Oliver’ ashes sit in a box in a curio cabinet in our front hall, and we’ve discussed scattering them in the places he hated most. But that list is so long we don’t know where to begin.

MARY DUAN is a former Weekly editor, reporter and columnist who lives in Salinas.