Routines

It would be time to wake up. There was no need for an alarm clock – my internal clock always wakes me up around six o’clock in the morning. I’d roll on over and grab my phone to check the insane number of emails I get during the night, check the time, then spend fifteen to twenty minutes scrolling social media to see all the good news, bad news, and really dumb stuff available. After fifteen minutes, I’d hear the inevitable click-clack, click-clack of Starbuck as she got up from her bed and stretched on the floor before coming to stand at the bedside waiting for me to get out of extreme comfort of my bed.

I’d flip the bedside light on and roll out of bed while she jumped up and down at the bedroom door. I’d open the door and she’d zoom through the den and get in front of the door to the porch waiting for me to let her out.

“Alright, go potty,” I would say as she took off across the yard. I would then go into the kitchen, turn on the coffee-maker, fill it with water, and then go back to the door where she would be waiting for me to let her back in. Starbuck would zoom back in and head straight to her food and water, noticing there was nothing in the food bowl before looking back at me.

“Shower time, my girl,” I’d say as she walked back into the bedroom with me following. I would shut the door once back inside. I had to shut the door because years and years ago, when I would leave it open, she would go on a rampage through the kitchen and eat whole loaves of bread, tear into the garbage, and leave a trail of ripped up paper towels before coming back into the bedroom and laying down, pretending she did nothing. Thus, the door had to remain shut.

I would take my morning shower (I can’t function without it waking me up). I would then put my contacts in while listening to the constant click-clack, click-clack of her impatient pacing from the bathroom door to the bedroom door, anticipating breakfast. As soon as I opened the door, she would start jumping up and down until I opened it up for her to run to her food bowl. I would follow, grab her food cup and fill it and pour it into her bowl while she jumped up and down, spun around, and jumped some more.

You know that scene in The Dark Crystal where the Skeksis are feasting and some of them stick their beaks into the food and slobber it down like gross weirdos? Picture that but a black-haired dog grunting. So while she did that, I would pour my coffee and put in the creamer. By the time I’d walk back by, all her food was gone and she was waiting on me at the door to my office. She would walk on into the room and I’d say, “Alright, my girl, let’s get started.” Starbuck would jump up on her spot on the couch, I’d sit down in my chair, she would fall asleep again and I would get some work done.

And that was our morning routine for as long as I can remember.

Hello

I remember the day that I found out about a litter of pups. I was at the July Fourth celebration at Eureka Landing talking with some friends. I mentioned that I was thinking of getting a dog and Cody Watson let me know that the Days had a litter recently. They were eight weeks old at the time and ready to go. So a few days later I rolled up to Liz Day’s house and she led me out back to where the pups were staying. It was like a clown car when they poured out of the shed.

Mrs. Liz led them to the porch where she poured food in their bowls. All of the pups were pigging out on their food, their little tails wagging like crazy. There was one pup, however, that didn’t seem to be interested in the food – this would later be mere coincidence. Instead, this pup was more interested in me. She scurried over to me and looked up at me with these big, round, amber-colored eyes. They were the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen on a dog.

“Your name is Starbuck,” I said. “I think you’re the one.”

This was our first contact and it was very unexpected. I knew right then and there that she would be a great hunting dog. Go ahead and laugh, folks, because I laugh real hard at that memory. Yes indeed, she was supposed to be a working retriever. I loaded her up in the car and she slept in the passenger seat for a little bit. Every time I looked over at her, though, she was eyeing me with some kind of look that to this day I can’t describe.

Her first night was a long one. I was still living with my parents at the time. You see, it had been less than a year since I was diagnosed and treated for cancer. Starbuck was meant to be both a hunting dog and companion to get through some of the hard times that it caused. My parents were far from thrilled that I brought home a dog – especially because I didn’t exactly let them know that I was getting one in the first place. So when she was constantly whining and crying on the back porch that first night, I heard, “She can’t stay here,” so many times that I may have gotten a little bit mad. So after a couple of hours, I snuck outside and picked her up, brought her into my room, spread a towel out on the bad (she wasn’t exactly the cleanest dog yet), and we slept right there the rest of the night. Only recently did I tell my parents about that.

Some people laughed when they would hear her name for the first time. Allow me to clarify why her name is Starbuck. She’s named after the callsign of a pilot from a television series called Battlestar Galactica. Kara “Starbuck” Thrace.

There.

Personality

Dogs most definitely have personalities. Some are lazy, some are hyper, and some are clingy. Somehow, Starbuck was all three. If napping were a contest, we’d be rich as hell! She was also ready at a moment’s notice to ride. I couldn’t open the door to the house without her running to catch up so she could potentially jump in the truck and go. Were we going to the creek? To a field? To the office? Wisconsin? Didn’t matter to her, so long as she could go and have fun. God forbid I walk into a room by myself. She had to be right there at my ankles.

This goes back to her training. We started the day after she came home. “Sit” and “Lay Down” were first. We mastered those pretty quickly. I was actually very proud of both her and myself for getting it done. “Stay,” however, was a slow process. Remember, she was clingy. We didn’t get that done until I had moved to Troy for school. She was staying at my dad’s by this point and I would have to come home on the weekends to take care of her.

I would hold my hand out and say, “Stay!” over and over while walking around her in a circle. This seemed to work. It may have been a little unconventional but hear me out. After about five minutes of this, I’d start to make the circle wider and maintaining my hand and voice. It would take about fifteen minutes but eventually I would get about twenty yards away from her. Over time, that circle widened faster until the command clicked for her.

She was hard-headed. My dad called me one afternoon and informed me that Starbuck had found a yellow-jacket nest. He tried to stop her but he said it was like watching in slow-motion. Starbuck rolled around in the nest like Uncle Scrooge McDuck in his vat of gold. Naturally she found out real fast what not to do when finding something interesting and different. I pulled up the next day and laughed when I got out of the truck. She was fine, folks, I promise. She was just suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuper high thanks to Benadryl.

It gets better.

One day we took the boat out to Holly Creek and just rode around the water for no reason other than to have some fun. Starbuck was sitting at the front of the boat, head facing into the wind. It was slow-motion, too, what happened next.

She looked at me as I was driving the boat. She looked out over the water and then back at me again. She stood up.

“NO!” I shouted. “Don’t you do it!”

She took a step toward the side of the boat.

“STARBUCK! NO!”

She put her paw up on the side. I throttled down.

“DAMN IT!” I shouted as I jumped up from my seat and off to the side to pull her stubborn butt back into the moving boat she had just jumped out of.

She never did it again. She went under from head to tail.

She did love water, though. She hated baths. She wasn’t a fan of the rain. Starbuck loved swimming and jumping through shallow water. It didn’t have to be a creek, either.

We attended family day at McCullough Christian Center one afternoon. They go all out to celebrate families at the church. I brought her along so she could socialize and that was clearly a mistake (maybe). She saw the kids’ pool and went straight for it, jumped in, laid down, and started lapping up the water. She stayed there, too.

The thing is, I never showed her how to behave around other people. She was always a loving dog. Never met anyone that she had aggression toward. I was worried when she was younger because I didn’t want her to get aggressive with folks that were just walking by or visiting the house. UPS and FedEx, for example. It is always amazing to me to remember how much she loved every single person she saw.

She was so submissive, too, to a fault. I’ll save you the details but my friends had an extremely…let’s say needy dog. Starbuck and I visited their house one afternoon and their dog saw Starbuck and got…needy. Nothing happened physically. At least, not on Starbuck’s part. It was pretty gross. And she just sat there on the ground, looking at all of us, not a care in the world.

I did take her hunting a few times but that never took. The last straw for me was sitting out in the field shooting doves. I finally hit one and called her name. Starbuck looked up at me with those amber-eyes and I could tell. If she could talk like us, this is what she would have said.

“Ainchu got legs?”

So she was a lap dog, a couch dog, and a big ol’ lazy butt.

She was incredibly smart. I never actually house-trained her. After I moved home from Troy because college degrees are not what my high school teachers made it out to be, I moved into my grandparents’ guest house and Starbuck was so excited. She didn’t know what to think about living in the house! It took her a few days not to hesitate to come over the threshold.

The amazing part is when she needed to go relieve herself, she would go to the door and walk back to me over and over. It was incredible because I did not train her to do that. Not until she was much older (in the last couple of years) did she go in the house and then only because I had to be out of town for a bit and couldn’t let her out.

The worst was how she would go out into the cow field some mornings when I let her out, especially mornings where I had to be somewhere like work at a certain time, and she would find the biggest pile of cow doodoo and roll all up in it. Those were always good mornings.

She would also chase mockingbirds and catch them. It got so bad that we couldn’t walk outside without getting dive-bombed by angry mockingbirds. Growing up in Monroeville, I don’t mind watching mockingbirds meet their ends. It’s just – how – they had to meet their ends.

I walked outside one morning and found Starbuck running toward me with a stick in her mouth. Upon closer inspection I saw that it was the legs of a bird. Upon even closer inspection, I realized that it was still alive.

“Starbuck,” I pleaded. “Spit it out!”

And, after giving me “the look,” she tilted her head back and swallowed the still kicking bird whole.

God's Gift

Many of you know the story so I’ll skip a lot of the details. You can click here to read about that.

Starbuck was much more than a dog to me. She was sent by God to keep me sane that night and take the focus off all of the bad. She reminded me that she was dependent on my well-being.

Who would love her like I could if I were gone? I held her close that night and slept. It was the one night in our twelve years that she would sleep right next to my chest. She knew.

She knew.

Modeling, Fame, and Retirement

As a photographer, of course I’m going to photograph my dog. Other people have photographed their dogs but mine was prettier than all of them and you can fact-check me all you want, the conclusion will be the same. My dog was better than yours.

I mentioned those amber-colored eyes that could peer into your soul but I haven’t mentioned her coat yet. It was so shiny and sleek that it was the most commented-on trait that we ever got. That didn’t go to her head but it did go to mine.

I overloaded my family with pictures of her. In fact, I got my dad a frame once that I wrote “My Granddog” in calligraphy. He was very…uh…happy to get it because it had four pictures of his favorite dog. It was kind of a joke but also kind of a statement that I’m still single with no kids. You’re welcome. He still hasn’t hung it.

He would often refer to her as “that dog” or “the mut.”

Little did he know that she was fairly famous.

Some of you that are local may remember the United Bank app that you logged in on your phone to check or transfer your balances.

You may remember that the picture you saw when you logged in featured a black labrador retriever at the head of a boat looking out over a sunrise on the water.

Yes, this was Starbuck.

So many people knew her without knowing her. I surprised a few people once. They said, “Oh my gosh, she looks just like the United Bank dog!”

To which I would respond, “Well…she is.” It was my big-headed achievement. My girl was that dog.

I also provided images to Denny Manufacturing for their catalog and website that often featured my girl on their old masters or their polycloths. She even visited the Denny warehouse on occasion where she would meet a new friend named Chevy.

Starbuck was part of my entries in my first ever International Photographic Competition. She did not score well but it had more to do with me than her. The comments didn’t affect my ability to still be proud of the images of my girl.

It was probably around 2017 or 2018 when she decided she had had enough of the model life. She had learned what a camera was and even worse, that my phone was also a camera. She would no longer look at me or the camera but would look away, turn around, or walk away. She’d had enough. She quit.

I mean, if I said the words, “Ready,” or, “Eat,” or “Ready to eat,” she would look for a split second. But I could only get away with that so many times before she would catch on. Thus, her modeling career was over. She would still be on the United Bank app for a little while, though.

Road Trips

Starbuck had some of the most horrible manners of any dog I’ve ever met. We went on a road trip to Lubbock to visit the Duncans and attend one of West Texas Photofest in February of 2023. I was excited because this was the first really long road trip we took. She had joined me to Hunstville (4 hours) before but she’d never been in the car longer than that. My house to Lubbock is fourteen hours.

When we arrived it was late at night and I had booked a hotel in town that had prepped a room with a dog package. Starbuck had no clue what to think. This was one of the five nights total that she and I spent a night in a hotel. Concrete floors? Open space? Dog food and snacks just for her laid out on a table?

Paradise!

We only spent one night there and only because we came in a day early and arrived very late at night. It was cold, too. The next morning we went out to the Duncans’ house where we met up with their dog, Ranger. Ranger is a good, well-behaved boy. We will circle back to him later because it’s important that she met him.

The whole trip was going great. Our friends Amber, Heather, and Scott came to town to teach at Photofest that weekend so they all go to meet the famous Starbuck – some of the few photographers that ever did. Now as I said before, Starbuck was very friendly, loving, and had no aggression in her whatsoever. So naturally, in her mind, we drove fourteen hours to meet up with people that were there to see her. They were not.

Starbuck stayed outside with Ranger during the day or slept in the kennel at night. She behaved moderately decently until the final morning of Photofest – the day we were set to go home.

I got dressed and went into the kitchen before leaving to attend the class when I hear Deanna in the foyer.

“No, no,” I heard. “You can’t have that…”

I sped up.

“What did she do?” I asked aggressively, staring into a kennel at two eyes that were staring right back at me, all innocent and definitely not guilty.

“Oh, nothing,” said Deanna. She’s real good about not appearing aggravated or in any way upset. Believe me, though, I was.

Starbuck had gotten into Ranger’s snacks and ate an entire bag of salmon treats and some sugar, I think. Maybe some other stuff.

An entire, unopened bag of SALMON treats.

Our ride home would be FOURTEEN HOURS.

The only thing that was funny was that she took all the treats and snacks she stole and ate and hid them in the kennel under a blanket. It was less funny when her gassy butt was trapped inside the truck for more than nine-hundred miles.

A year and a half later, I was set to teach at Twin Cities Professional Photographers. Unfortunately, it was a holiday weekend (something we didn’t realize until a bit later). Normally, I’d need to fly and it would be around four-hundred dollars round-trip. This would have been around eight-hundred. We decided to drive. It was only twenty-one hours. We drove straight through the night and arrived at four o’clock the next afternoon at Nate and Teresa Peterson’s house in Wisconsin. They got to see how clingy she was right off the bat.

We went out on the boat – bear in mind, just drove twenty-one hours straight and only fell asleep driving three times – and got to experience a beautiful afternoon on a lake. Wisconsin is more beautiful than I thought, by the way.

There was a restaurant on the water – can’t remember the name – but dogs were welcome to sit outside with you. Starbuck was a beggar. She didn’t used to be. My parents fed her under the table one time and that was it. So I knew she would probably need to stay on the boat where I could see her and she could see us.

But Nate and Teresa felt bad and said to go get her. She had her head stuck in the crack between the pontoon’s gate. It was pitiful, just how she wanted it to appear. She was good at getting sympathy and getting people to believe that she wasn’t loved and she wasn’t fed.

That was a fun trip. She got to hang out with my class the next day in the studio and lay around. We went home on a different route from St. Paul and ended up getting a hotel room. She was ready to go home, though, because she had become a home-body dog.

Until I See You Again

This is the section I don’t want to write. I wasn’t ready to say it and still, even now, I haven’t said it. I wasn’t ready for her to leave and neither was she. The details of what happened are for myself and my parents. My biggest regret is not taking her with me on my long road trip to Texas and Colorado. I will carry that regret with me until I see her again waiting at the pearly gates, jumping up and down like she used to when I pulled up to the house after being gone for any amount of time. I wasn’t home. I wasn’t here for her when she needed me most. She was always there for me but I couldn’t return the favor. I think that’s what hurts most of all.

I haven’t lived alone in fifteen years. Since 2014, my life has been filled with potty breaks and routines and odd feeding patterns. For twelve years, I had a little best friend that I called Starbuck, baby girl, my girl, big dummy…this list goes on. When no one else was there to talk to, I could at least hold my girl in my recliner and know that there was something in this world that depended on me and loved me no matter what.

Now, she’s gone.

I have so many memories and so many images captured over the last twelve years, from day one to before I left for the road trip. I can look at a picture remember where we were, what we were doing, why we were there, the other people that were there (if any), how long we were there…that is, of course, what I do for a living. I’ve just never had to have that for myself before.

I have lost loved ones before. My Pop. My Granny. My Grandma. My cousin. My Great-Granny. Clark. Mrs. Ruth. Harry. So many people in my life. This one, though, has hit the hardest of all. She wasn’t a human, but she had so much personality that often times I would forget she’s just an animal.

Ever since I got the call that she was looking sick, followed by the call, all I’ve been able to think about is what I could have done to prevent this from happening. She may have been twelve, very old for a lab, but she had another couple of years of her life left. She would still jump up and down, spin around when she got fed, bark, run after anyone that came down the driveway (to see her)…I’ve been doing nothing but blaming myself. My best friend is gone because of me. What’s worse is the string of people online that have told me to replace her with another dog to get support for some organization or other, using my grief to promote something. Because I wish to keep this professional, I won’t say what I’d like to say here. But know that, when those comments came up and I read them, so did a few other people that had some choice words for you.

I don’t date around here – especially around here. I know the quality of women here and all the good ones are gone. It was suggested to me over and over that I get a girlfriend to occupy my time and whatnot. I always smiled with my response.

“Nah, I got a dog.”

Starbuck was my favorite thing. She was my gift from God above. We were two peas in a pod, salt and pepper…now we are worlds apart.

The night before I left for the road trip was her night to sleep up in the bed with me. So she slept at my feet like she always did, above the covers, curled up and snoring. I woke up to our usual routine.

Check emails
Let her out
Turn on coffee
Let her in
Shut bedroom door
Shower
Shave
Open bedroom door
Food and water in the bowl
Pour coffee
Start the day

This day was different. Rather than go into the home office for the day, I had to load up my truck for a two week trip with most of my studio in the bed of the truck. Starbuck went to her bed in the den and I walked over to her, knowing that it would be another two weeks before I was home again. I know she wouldn’t sleep because she couldn’t sleep when I was gone. Same here. I wrapped my arms around her and said, “Be good, my girl. I’ll be home in two weeks.”

She wouldn’t look at me until I forced her to. One long scratch behind the ears and I turned and left, not looking back. For moment, I thought about loading her up but thought she’d be too much of an inconvenience for two weeks on the road. My biggest regret.

That was the last time I would see her. That was the last time I would hear the click-clack. The last time I would see her amber eyes looking sad and pitiful, trying to get me to either stay or take her with me.

If I could turn back time, the first thing I would do is I would go back to this moment and hit myself over the head; I would then load that girl up in my truck and we’d set off for Lubbock together. The second thing I would do is go back twelve years ago to that afternoon at Liz Day’s house when Starbuck’s eyes and my own met for the first time, then I would relive all twelve years over again.

All the headaches of training. All the heartaches of loss. All the depression and anxiety attacks. The night I tried to kill myself. All of it. Every last second. Because every moment that has gone by was made all the better for having taken on the responsibility of caring for another life other than my own. To know that there was something that depended on me for twelve years and that she loved everything and everyone around her because she was loved means the world to me. To get that gift back to care for all over again, knowing how it would end.

That is love, my friends. It’s a bond between man and dog that can’t be replicated in other pets, not even cats. Cats are great but they’re independent. They don’t need us. Dogs, though, need that companionship and those caretakers. Dogs are our family. When you welcome one into your home, it should be forever.

I miss my girl. Every time my chair squeaks, she would jump down from the couch and come over because, in her mind, it was time for me to get up and either feed her or let her out. When my chair squeaks now, I’m waiting for the click-clack of her feet on the cold concrete floor. Every time I walk out of a room, I’m looking behind me to see if she’s following. When I’m cooking, I’m looking at the place she would lay down on the floor to watch me handling the food. I haven’t moved her beds yet. When I’m watching television, I’m glancing down at the empty bed next to the coffee table that for so long was her spot when I was relaxing. I still close the bedroom door when I get a shower. I’m even closing my office door when I leave the house.

I know it’ll be a while to get used to it. For twelve years, everything I did had her in mind. Everywhere I went I would have to make sure she was taken care of. Whether I was leaving for a day, a weekend, or a week, she was taken care of. And if I was only leaving for a few hours, I had to make sure I was home in a decent amount of time so that she could go out, eat, and sleep properly.

All that is gone, now.

Starbuck came into my heart and made herself at home. Now that she’s gone, there is an emptiness where she once was. I have found a comfort, though.

When I got the call, I was with Cris and Deanna Duncan. Cris brought me back to his house from the theater so that I could just grieve for a while. That night, they let their dog Ranger stay in the room I was in. For some reason, he slept on the floor that night. I lay there, tossing and turning, thinking of nothing but my girl, wondering how it happened, guessing, second-guessing every decision I had made. I couldn’t sleep. So I cried out to God, “Father, please give me comfort.”

As if in direct answer, Ranger chose that moment to hop up on the bed and curl up at my feet, above the covers, in the exact same position that Starbuck would get. For the first time all day, I smiled. And I slept.

Now is the time that I say the words I never wanted to say. I knew that I would someday have to say it. I knew that it would hurt but I would have some kind of closure. I had planned out her final day, given the option. That was taken away from me. Instead, I will now walk outside, go to her grave that I have fixed up, and say the final words I’ll say to my girl.

“Goodbye, my girl, until I see you again.”

7 Comments

Sep 4, 2025, 8:43:47 PM

Nancy Davis - Starbucks was a beauty. Your writing, your love for her have me in big, ugly tears. We are never ever ready to have our fur family leave us. I’m so sorry you weren’t with her. Your pictures capture the love shared. Thank you for this beautiful love story of a man and his love for his best friend.

Sep 3, 2025, 9:45:49 AM

Julie McDonald - It’s so hard to lose our fur babies!! I loved seeing all the adventures of Starbuck!! I know you miss her greatly!! 🙏🏻❤️🙏🏻

Sep 2, 2025, 6:22:49 PM

Dan Emmerman - What a wonderful life. A beautiful companion. Time will heal and you’ll never forget her love. They love us unconditionally and we can only hope to return it the same way. You did. She knew. I promise. Thinking of you man.

Sep 2, 2025, 5:24:52 PM

Patti Clifford - Corey - thanks for sharing your pain and love for Starbuck. Our Maggie was Starbuck’s sister and can picture her in many of your descriptions of Starbuck. Click click on the floor. Super shiny black coat. Brown soulful eyes. Loves to be where ever my husband and I are. Loves her routine. Our Mags is a very loud and sloppy drinker - my guess is Starbuck may have been also. I must end this message, because at this moment she’s flipping her dinner bowl and unhappy that I’m 2 minutes late feeding her! My heart goes out to you and I hope all your happy memories will comfort you during this time of healing.

Sep 2, 2025, 3:58:48 PM

Joylynne Harris - Corey, I am so so sorry for the loss of Starbuck. May she visit you in your dreams, and provide signs that she loves you, and will wait until it is your time to join her at the bridge.. They never EVER live long enough, but it's even harder when it's sudden and unexpected. Nothing I can say will take the pain away... I know you loved her tremendously.. May you find comfort and joy in the images and memories you share together. BIG hugs and love to you my dear friend... Again I'm so sorry..

Sep 2, 2025, 2:50:09 PM

Corey McDonald - Thank you. It has indeed been hard but I've found a way to remember and to keep my mind occupied in building her grave, painting, and so much more, including my next art piece that will feature her.

Sep 2, 2025, 2:29:02 PM

Lisa Watson - I’m so sorry, Corey! I’m crying! I can’t even imagine your pain. I pray that time will heal your heart, and that Starbuck will forever live there too. Losing a family member is hard, but losing a fur baby is the hardest!

Starbuck - A Story of Hello and Goodbye