When we picked Titus up from the Humane Society in July of 2020, he was 2 months old and weighed 16 pounds. The shelter staff guessed he and his littermates were boxer/hound mixes. We thought that seemed reasonable. In retrospect, we should’ve taken a closer look at those paws.

When he went from the little guy pictured above to this:

…in a matter of months, quickly outgrowing his status as “Tiny Titus,” we decided to get his DNA tested. Results: half-mastiff, half-Doberman. Very different animal, so to speak, than a boxer/hound.

We adopted the two dogs we’d had prior to Titus when they were adults. Titus was our first opportunity to have a dog from puppyhood and mold his character precisely the way we wanted. Or so we thought.

We were hoping for a sweet, loving, snuggly dog we could take on paddleboarding and hiking adventures. Our sweet/loving/snuggly hopes were certainly fulfilled. We just weren’t expecting the snuggler to cap out at almost 130 pounds.

Our hiking dream, however, was not to be realized. Titus does love to be outside, but his stamina is almost nil. Arriving at an outdoorsy spot is a joy for him.

But after about ten minutes of frolicking, he falls out.

And this can be a problem. Once he’s down, he’s down, and he’s not getting back up until he’s good and ready, no matter how many cookies are put in front of his nose.

Paddleboarding is a whole other story. We brought him on a paddleboarding adventure during his very first weekend with us, thinking he’d then be primed to feel comfortable on a board and love being on the water.

We were wrong. As it turns out, Titus thinks paddleboarding was invented by the devil and water sucks. We even tried shifting gears to an inflatable kayak, but Titus let us know how he felt about that before we’d even put the boat in the water.

When we did get it in the water, he sat right on top of me, rigid as a stone, until I rowed us back to the dock. That was his final water-based adventure.

Despite his lack of grit and hatred of water sports, we love our darling, giant beast, even when he won’t stop whining and we have to do this:

These days, unfortunately, all is not well with our sweet boy. One morning last August, I heard an alarming commotion – something between a bark and a scream, followed by a lot of banging – and found Titus in the front room, thrashing wildly on the floor. He’d kicked the coffee table across the room. He was foaming at the mouth. His bladder had emptied. After about a minute, his body stopped convulsing, and he lay still, eyes blank. A few minutes later, he sat up clumsily, drool still seeping from his mouth, then tottered to his feet.

The experience was spectacularly awful, and sadly, that was only the first. He’s had seven seizures since, four of which occurred after he’d been put on a heavy dose of anti-convulsant meds. We returned to the vet today and are going to try a meds change. Fingers crossed that it works.

But I’m not writing about this to bum myself, or my readers, out. Really, I just want to tell you all about Daisy.

When Titus first started having seizures, we had to keep Daisy away, putting her outside or in another room or verbally instructing her to stay back until the incident was over. We understood that she wanted to be near him while he was clearly in distress, but we didn’t want her to get kicked in the face or freak him out further while he was coming to.

During his last episode, though, we didn’t have to intervene with her at all. Daisy watched from outside our magnetic screen door while Titus seized, then kept watching as he lay still on the floor. It wasn’t until he’d stood up and shaken himself off that she came inside, walked up to him, and gently began cleaning his fur. It was truly the sweetest thing in the world.

Years ago, I said I was going to start a podcast called The Improbable Upside. (I never did, but who knows…maybe someday.) Each episode was going to center around an unexpected, good thing that came out of a shitty situation. In the case of Titus’ seizure disorder, the improbable upside has been witnessing Daisy’s nurturing love and affection for him. Titus and Daisy get along just fine, but there’s an undercurrent of jealousy in their relationship, especially on her side. Seeing her take on the role of his caregiver is so heartwarming. It certainly doesn’t make the seizures worth it, but it helps to ease the sting.