View from the North 40: With deepest sorrow …

Early this week my husband and I had to say goodbye to the best dog ever.

Cooper was complex, unceasingly faithful, funny, a bit of jerk, neurotic, sweet and adored by many fans and loved ones. He was the number one wing man in my posse, John's best little buddy, the supervisor on all work parties, a semi-professional trick performer and the finest example of how far a good attitude will get you.

His early life unfolds like the dog version of a 19th century novel, maybe a Jane Austin, about a child of tainted lineage born to hard times. Don’t worry through his struggles he becomes a better man, ultimately attaining the virtues of his noble birthright, but with no desire for the status.

Born in a Billings dog pound, Cooper was the only pup to a purebred miniature Schnauzer who had fallen for a dog of questionable lineage and no means to support her after her family kicked her out. Tramp that she was.

Forcibly abandoned by his mother at 5 weeks old, he was adopted by a family ill-suited to care for, train or generally deal with a puppy of typical terrier temperament that had no canine or human social skills or basic house training. The pup’s life became another form of imprisonment with most of his hours spent locked in a crate.

At 10 weeks he was turned away by his first family to a Roundup dog rescue. Sent off to boarding school for basic training, but the human there didn’t want to adopt him after being told he would grow to 45 pounds, well beyond the gentile 15 pounds of a true miniature Schnauzer.

But the rescue posted his photo and profile on the internet, and a couple longing for another canine companion — after going dogless and alone together for One and ½ years — took him home forever.

That was John and me. We worked hard to become a family with synchronized neuroses, and then we lived happily ever after for the rest of the little dog’s life.

The stories of Cooper, with his larger-than-life character, could fill a book well beyond this column space — like how on the morning after the first day in his life that he got to sleep on his very own bed in his very own humans’ bedroom rather than in a crate, he heard me waking up, ran around to my side of the bed, wrapped his front legs around my neck and hugged me tight until his happiness required running like a mad man up and down the hallway.

I got a hug every morning, whether I wanted to sleep in or not, and randomly throughout the day until his back legs got too old to hold him up like that — except on special occasions.

He was as agile and athletic as a rhinoceros, but he had a long repertoire of tricks and stunts to wow people, and he got insulted if he was given a treat without being asked to perform at least one trick. Whenever possible, he positioned himself so that he could keep and eye on both his humans at the same time.

He was afraid of being outside in the dark, if he couldn’t see his home or sit in the safety of one of his vehicles.

People thought he was irresistibly adorable, even after he would wag his tail happily at their “oh, he’s sooo cuuute!” but then snub their petting efforts because he didn’t like strangers touching him. A forgotten receipt at Cooper’s favorite local store was returned to us with the note at the top “This is Cooper’s people” — because we were not as memorable as he was.

After hanging out with John and his friends at the shop — one of his favorite activities — he would saunter up to me like, “I was just hanging with the guys. We solved a lot of the world’s problems. Too bad you’re a chick and couldn’t understand these things.”

As a dog wired to have only child syndrome, the horses were his natural adversaries. He would taunt them with treasures like sticks or a dried horse apple, and growl and bark at them if they came to see what he had. When a cat of similar temperament took up residence with us eight years ago, the two of them became the brothers they never had. They would hang out together and antagonize each other in equal measure. The cat misses his dog.

We took Cooper everywhere with us, and as long as we were with him, his world was right and ours was, too.

As he got older, he showed other people his sweeter side, with less barking and more petting. Ears and eyes failing him, arthritis in one foot and diabetes, he would dodder around with us, still insisting on supervising projects, though it was by braille.

Two things he did every day, from the day after we brought him home to the day before he left us. One was to wait in anticipation for us to return to him if we left — even if it was just stepping outside and coming back in.

The other was, about one-quarter of the times we came back to the house, to wait at the bottom of the front steps for a special invitation to come in. In the early half of his life, he seemed to truly need the reassurance that he was home. In the later years, it seemed to us that he just liked to relive that happy feeling of belonging.

We wish we had another 15 years with our super Cooper.

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And 15 more after that would be even better at [email protected] .