A very loud voice silenced: RIP, Roxanne Renee Kaye

 

Born some time in 2010. Died August 13, 2026

A kind and compassionate vet came out to my house early Thursday morning, August 13, 2026, and we sent my sweet old Roxanne over the Rainbow Bridge.

Roxy, who was at least 16 years old, was a beautiful gold and white foxhound coonhound mix; that's my best guess, anyway, as we never had her DNA-tested. Some of our friends thought she might have some Golden Retriever in her, and one thought perhaps there was a Black Mouth Cur in her bloodline. I'm sticking with foxhound coonhound. The important point was that she was 100 percent canis familiaris, and that's always been good enough for me.

Roxanne was wrestling with several medical issues and a significantly diminished quality of life, and… it was time. For all practical purposes, she had been on home hospice care since I moved to a new city this past November. I knew even before I moved that she didn’t have much time left, and frankly I am surprised that she lasted as long as she did. But, finally… it was time.

My very dear best friend Joan was with us, as was little Dobby, my Chihuahua mix. The cats, Orlando and Pyewacket, were hanging around too, but mostly disengaged from the proceedings.

* * * * *

Roxy had been my late husband Ron Kaye's special rescue project way back in 2012. She was about two years old when we first saw her, and a dog who looked so much like her that she had to have been her sister, on the side of the two-lane country road that ran by the ranch where we were living in rural Waller County. The dogs had obviously been dumped. Day after day they sat mournfully at the side of that road, no doubt waiting for their people to come back and get them. Their people never did. Like so many other ignorant, irresponsible humans, those folks probably figured it was okay to dump dogs "out in the country" where they could "run free."

Ron had the idea of persuading Roxy and her sister to come up to our house, after which our landlord at the time, Amy, could take them in. She had a large foxhound kennel right behind our house, and being an animal lover, she also took in strays on occasion. We had spoken with Amy and she had tentatively agreed to take the dogs, but first we had to get them off the street and into our fenced yard. That was the most important thing, because they definitely were not safe where they were.

This was easier said than done, for whenever Ron tried to approach them, either on foot or in our minivan, they would run. But they would always come back. Roxanne's sister was a little less shy than Roxy, but unfortunately she was hit by a car and killed. That's what happens all too often when dogs are let loose to "run free" -- they get run over instead.

After that it was just Roxy, still waiting by the side of the road, looking at the world with her big sad eyes. We were so scared for her.

Ron began taking a bowl of kibble every day to the end of the long private drive that ran by our house, and rather than crossing over to where Roxy was, he would set it in the grass on our side of the road. Roxy would venture across to get to the food, but she would only do so after Ron walked away. Still he kept at it, day after day, week after week, and she finally began to let him get a little closer to her. He moved the food bowl progressively nearer to our house every day. His patience was endless.

This process began some time in the fall, and it eventually paid off. As Thanksgiving approached, it was clear that Roxy was warming up to Ron, and she even started warming up to me, as I would sometimes go with Ron on his daily food bowl delivery. It was Ron who was the most dedicated to the project, though. He was determined to get this sad lovely dog off the street and safely into our yard, after which we would get her to Amy's place. That was the idea, anyway.

He was finally successful in mid-December, as the Christmas holidays were approaching. Roxanne had taken to hanging around just outside our fence, so one day he opened the gate... and she sauntered right into our yard as if she belonged there.

Roxanne was not overly affectionate at first, and she was still a bit shy, but she was friendly. It didn't take us long to decide that we wanted to adopt her ourselves, so she joined our growing family of four-legged companions. The year 2012 had been a busy adoption/rescue year for us. We had a big book project and were making pretty decent money, and we had lots of room at our place. Roxanne was a welcome addition.

We didn't actually settle on a name for her right away. At first we just called her "GG" for "Golden Girl." We experimented with variations, such as Golda and Gilda, but they didn't really seem to fit. For a while we played around with the idea of calling her "Cassandra," because we both liked that name. But that didn't seem to fit either.

I finally came up with the name Roxanne; I'm not sure why, but she responded to the name better than she had to the others, and, well, it seemed to fit. I gave her a middle name too, Renee, because it rhymed nicely with Kaye. (Yes, yes, some of our pets had Ron's last name and some had mine.) Sometimes when calling her, I would sing out her name to the tune of the old classic song "Roxanne" by The Police. I would like to say that this made her come to me more quickly, but I think it had the opposite effect. I never claimed to be a good singer.

From the beginning, Roxy got along well with our brindle Plott hound mix Ruger, who was also a recent rescue/adoption at the time, and with our two mini dachshunds, Lexi and Lukas, who were fairly recent shelter rescues, as well as with Layla, an elderly tri-colored hound mix whom we'd bought years before at the iconic Wabash Feed Store in Houston after her original person had to give her up. Roxy even got along fairly well with our wild-child Aussie shepherd/Blue Heeler/border collie mix, Kali, a rescue from a culvert in another rural area in Waller County.

But Roxy was a very dominant female dog, and so was Kali, and she and Kali sometimes exchanged words. They apparently had some sort of running rivalry for the position of Head Bitch. It was nothing serious until years later, when Kali was ailing, and Roxy, apparently deciding to take advantage of Kali’s extreme vulnerability, attacked her, seemingly intent on killing her. Needless to say, we separated the two.

In our early years with Roxanne, our friend Mike would sometimes bring his three dogs with him when he visited us, or we would keep them at our house when he went out of town. Everyone got along fine. As for the cats, Roxy was always cool with them too. She ignored them for the most part, and they ignored her.

For years Roxanne remained a bit of a wild child herself, often preferring to sleep outdoors at night in milder weather, instead of in the house. She was a catcher and consumer of squirrels, a couch eater, and an endlessly energetic girl who loved to wrestle with Ruger. She was strong and stubborn, and she was utterly fearless except during thunderstorms. Then she would cower under the kitchen table, or she'd huddle, trembling, against Ron's recliner if he was sitting in it. I suppose she thought that Daddy could keep her safe from the perilous forces of nature. After all, he had saved her from life on the street.

On October 25, 2013, Roxanne sang at our wedding, an outdoor affair at the ranch house in Waller County. Roxy and her four canine siblings had positioned themselves in a row along the fence, and just as Ron and I were making our way across the lawn to the makeshift altar that had been set up in a corner of the yard, the dogs let loose in glorious five-part harmony, exactly as if this had all been planned. Well, "harmony" is a bit of a stretch; perhaps "cacophony" is a better word. Their song lasted nearly a minute, and Roxanne's voice was the loudest one of all.

Later on during the reception, when the humans were enjoying a scrumptious feast indoors, I happened to glance out of the kitchen window and there was sweet Roxy, stretched out in the sunlight savoring a feast of her own: the butt and tail of an unfortunate squirrel were hanging out of her mouth. Several guests saw it too, but there was nothing we could do. Clearly it was too late to save the squirrel.

It wasn’t just at our outdoor wedding that Roxanne was loud. She was always loud. She sang for her supper with great enthusiasm, and was sometimes so deafening that I had to wear Ron's gun range ear protection when I was feeding the dogs. I'm not exaggerating. I would often say, "Roxy! Use your indoor voice!" But Roxanne did not have an indoor voice. She just had a voice, and it was very, very loud.

And now in this house, things are very, very quiet.

* * * * *

Roxanne outlived several of her fur siblings whom we had at the time she joined the family, and she got along with all of the subsequent adoptees and fosters who joined us over the years, dogs and cats alike. In late September of 2018, we welcomed little Dobby, also a street rescue, into the fold, and he and Roxy became pals. That's the two of them together in the picture above. Dobby kissed her goodbye Thursday morning as the euthanasia drugs were taking effect, and he kissed her again after she was gone. I know he misses her.

Ron and I said goodbye to sixteen fur babies in the more than three decades that we were together (and in case you're doing the math, we were together for twenty years before we finally tied the knot in 2013). Since Ron has been gone, I've had to say goodbye to three more: Ruger in July 2025, tuxedo kitty Kuan Yin on Valentine's Day of this year, and now Roxanne. Most of them left on their own, but there were a couple of times that Ron and I had to seek veterinary intervention to help a suffering soul go gentle into that good night.

But it was always a decision that we made together. I didn't have Ron to help me make this decision for Roxy, and it was incredibly difficult. I was so glad to have Joan, who said she would support me no matter what I decided. And I was also glad to have an understanding mobile vet and her kind assistant, who have obviously seen many pet parents through this difficult process. People like these women do the work of angels.

I believe I made the right decision for Roxanne. I am at peace with it. But it still hurts like hell.

* * * * *

The grief over Roxy would have been bad enough in and of itself. But in her final week and a half on earth, when she was, as I said, under home hospice care for all practical purposes, and I was wrestling with grueling quality-of-life/end-of-life decisions, I was blessed with an extra heaping helping of crap.

One of my vigilant neighbors posted an outrage-bait message on the page of a private Facebook group I belong to that was set up for residents of my city within a city. This woman lives two houses up the street from me; I have met her and we have exchanged names and pleasantries about our dogs. She likes to walk her little elderly dog up and down the street in a stroller; the dog is quite old and has trouble walking on its own. I found this charming, and I had thought she was a really nice person; I'd even thought that we might become friends.

But on August 3 she wrote a post saying that somebody in a neighborhood that she walks through is keeping their dog in their garage overnight. She didn't mention any names or specific locations, but she described some features of the garage that pretty much pointed to it being my place, such as a fan that is mounted high up and is visible through the garage door windows. She wrote that she heard the poor dog barking whenever she walked by, and added that she “didn’t want to cause issues” but she was concerned for the safety of the pet. She asked if there were any laws against keeping a dog in a garage.

And other members of that group came out in force, with the vast majority of them urging her to report this cruelty to the city's animal control department, or to the police, or to the sheriff, and so on and so on. They were all ready to come after me with Tiki torches and pitchforks, and they didn’t even know who I was or anything about the situation.

Only a couple of folks suggested that instead of immediately filing a report, the kind and neighborly thing to do would be to knock on the person’s door and find out if they needed help. One person wrote that the fixation on reporting people for everything was exactly why neighbors in this development have a bad reputation for being scolds and busybodies. Another one asked how this poster knew that the person was in fact keeping their dog confined in the garage for the entire night, every night.

For the most part, however, the responses were expressions of righteous outrage from angry villagers. Some were saying I had no business having a pet if I couldn’t take care of it, and that I should re-home it. One person called me a POS. "Please save this dog!" several cried. They were truly on the warpath.

I stayed out of the conversation entirely; there’s no sense in engaging with bullies. But I spent Roxy’s last days dreading a knock on my door from animal control or law enforcement.

* * * * *

This experience of dread and anxiety gave me a bit of a feeling of deja vu as I thought back to the summer of 2014, when I was falsely accused not merely of cruelty to a dog but of actual canicide. Some of you will probably remember this bat-crap crazy story; I wrote about it at length back in the day, so feel free to skip right over this part if you wish.

For the benefit of those who don't know: A lunatic scammer/cancer quack/phony doctor/racist/xenophobe/alleged sex predator named Leonard Coldwell, whom I like to call the Little Hitler of Scamworld, was big mad at me because I wouldn't stop writing blog posts criticizing him or making fun of him for...well, for pretty much everything he said and did. He'd been trying for years to discredit me by publicly posting all sorts of juvenile lies about me, telling his followers that I was a disease-ridden former prostitute, that I was a filthy drug addict, and that Big Pharma was paying me big bucks to lie about him because they felt threatened by his amazing natural cure protocols. Those were just a few of the major lies.

I laughed it all off because nobody who even remotely mattered in my life believed any of that stuff. Then he decided to try a new tack when a beloved dog of his apparently became very ill some time in July 2014, and subsequently died. He accused me of poisoning the dog. Which is absurd on so many, many levels: I'm a person who not only adores dogs, but I also lived hundreds of miles away from him (he was either in South Carolina or North Carolina, and I'm in Texas), and I had no idea where he actually lived, and besides, I hadn't even been aware of the existence of the dog until he came out with his blubbering accusations.

This wasn't just another absurd but basically harmless fabrication. As a public figure, Loony Lenny, who'd originally gained some prominence as a crony of a much more popular and successful serial scammer, Kevin Trudeau, had a small but not insignificant cultish following of conspiranoids and broken people. Many reacted immediately to the announcement about the dog being poisoned. They were livid. They were foaming at the mouth. They wrote that I should be hunted down, poisoned, tortured. One woman said someone should shoot me in the elbows and knees so I would be crippled for life.

What was scary was that unlike my neighbor in my current place, Little Hitler actually posted my full name, plus he doxxed me. He published my home address and even my private cell phone number, the latter of which I had never shared publicly; he could only have acquired it from a mutual friend of ours (well a friend of his, but a frenemy of mine). He openly invited his followers to "get in touch with me." Some tried. One person wrote me an email under an obviously fake name, threatening to burn down my house in the middle of the night.

In case you're wondering, I reported all of this not only to Facebook, which refused to remove most of his inflammatory posts because they "didn't violate community standards," but also to local law enforcement. The D.A. ultimately chose not to pursue the matter because of "insufficient evidence." Thanks for nothing, assholes.

But what struck me when reading the threads about me was that not one person asked, "Do you know for sure that Connie Schmidt poisoned your dog? What sort of evidence do you have?"

At least on this current thread, a few folks did ask the accuser: "How do you know this for sure?" So there are pockets of sanity here and there.

* * * * *

There had been occasions lately when I put Roxy in the garage temporarily while I was cleaning her large wire kennel, which I kept in the living room. That kennel is where she spent most of her time in her last weeks, sleeping on a soft comfy bed; she would sleep all day and often into the late afternoon or early evening. When she woke up and began barking, I would let her out, sometimes to the garage, where she could walk around and do her business, after which I would clean up. And sometimes, if the weather wasn't intolerable, I would let her out in the backyard for a while.

I hated keeping this formerly energetic girl confined, but I could no longer let her have free run of the house, because she had incontinence issues as well as cognitive issues -- dementia, I believe -- that often made her forget her house training. But I would release her from confinement for a while whenever she barked to be let out.

She was never really happy in the backyard -- unlike previous backyards she had known, where she used to love rolling around in the grass and would sometimes spend hours either basking in the sun or napping in the welcome shade of a big tree. In this yard, there are no trees for shade, and the weather is blisteringly hot now. Regardless of the weather, she just never seemed to feel at home in the new yard, and she would spend her time endlessly pacing, pacing, pacing. I understand that pacing is a fairly common sign of dementia in dogs.

In the last few weeks of her life I began taking her out in the yard at night, when it was cooler, so she could sniff and explore and do her business. I would keep her on a leash and walk with her, as her vision was getting poorer, and I didn't want her stumbling about and possibly hurting herself. I think the leash sometimes frustrated her, so on her last night, I released her from it and let her walk free under the stars, though I followed closely in order to guide her away from potential hazards.

And yes, as I said, sometimes I would put her in the garage for a while, at various times of the day or night as needed. In her last weeks I almost always stayed with her while she was out there. And sometimes she would bark while she was in the garage, whether I was there or not. They were loud barks because she was a loud girl. No doubt my vigilant neighbor heard her at times when she was taking one of her walks.

I took care of Roxanne as well as I could, given my extremely limited resources, which had diminished significantly after Ron's death. I feel guilty for not being able to give her a better life in her final months. But I think she always knew she was loved.

So those nosy neighbors can continue to gossip among themselves if they have nothing better to do. If one of them were actually to knock on my door about this matter, I'd be glad to tell them what was really going on. But the wagging tongues -- or keyboards -- seem to have gone quiet for now. Several folks have asked the original poster for a followup about the situation, but so far... crickets.

And me? I am grieving a dearly loved companion, and adjusting to a quieter house with a considerably smaller fur family than Ron and I had for many years. I cherish the ones who are still with me.

Run free, Roxanne Renee Kaye. Find Daddy. Sing for him, and sing loud. Find Ruger. Maybe even find Kali, who by now might have forgiven you for trying to kill her.

I'll miss you, my beautiful girl.