The Book of Odds mascot, Henry the Bulldog, died last week.

He had been diagnosed a few weeks earlier with a brain tumor after he began having seizures. His treatment slowed the seizures and once he metabolized the phenobarbital he was very much himself again, sweet and stubborn. Fortunately, Laura, my daughter, whose dog Henry was, visited in time to spend many days with him. She had a touch that seemed to still his seizures.

Unaware of his mortality, and even unaware of his seizures since he was unconscious when they occurred, Henry had the good animal sense to simply be himself no matter what was going on. We had some time with him, and he was scavenging as if it were his main occupation (it may have been, as bulldogs were originally called “butcher dogs” and must have spent much time waiting for tidbits to drop), growling at the merest disturbance with the false fierceness of the modern breed, sweetly laying his head on one's thighs or hands or even cheeks, searching for water bowls, since the prednisone made him thirst greatly, and looking at us with those wonderful eyes, red as that of Taurus the Bull in the northern night sky. He was very much Henry and we got to enjoy his company and feel again for some little while the trust a dog's affection conveys so richly.

Henry was the Book of Odds mascot and his photos grace our entryway on Bromfield Street, and the yoga mat on the wall bearing the impression of his morning’s “downward dog” pose. When he would visit we would call out “Henry time!? This meant that all wastebaskets would need to be raised to giraffe-level. Dogs are creatures of habit and Henry thought of the Book of Odds offices as a grand scavenger hunt site with handy little cylinders containing smells and treasures. He never tired of the search.

He was a good mascot for us, I think, a company of fact-scavengers, and characterized as he was by a moral sweetness but also a stubborn dedication to doing what we do right. Henry could not be persuaded except by force majeure and a hard look, and even then he would acquiesce by trotting off on his own, maintaining the fiction of his own having selected the path by leading the way.

Henry was from outside the workplace, but his presence was a reminder that our true workplace is the human heart and mind, the concerns of everyday life. A husky bulldog breath from outside was a weekly reminder that the sounds we strain to hear in our work are the same sounds that prick up a bulldog’s ears: the sounds of our two species’ shared lives.

He did good for us all, and he did it in his wonderfully characteristic bulldog way, and my family will miss him forever. I think everyone at Book of Odds will miss him too.