Chompy Day

In memory of Mike's dog, Chompy, who passed away on Saturday, here are a few brief recollections...

• Mike got Chompy on March 3, 2002 from a rescue agency. Her original name was Ginger which, at the time, had not yet morphed from the secret codename for a Segway to a redhead in Britain.
• Chompy made chomping noises with her jaw as a form of communication, not unlike the Xhosa language. For about a day, she was called Chompsalottapuss.
• Chompy mainly liked me because I was willing to chase her around the pool table for longer than five minutes at a time. She played games of keep-away alternating between a hard hunk of plastic almost resembling a dinosaur, a piece of comically large rope, or a floppy stuffed animal with an unfortunate bacterial complexion.
• In the early days, Chompy was a fan of eating everything and then converting everything into liquid form for reapplication to the carpet via the pooper.
• Chompy could not be left alone for more than a minute, or else she would eat Kathy's seatbelt.
• In Super Smash Brothers Melee, there was a Pokemon ball that turned into some kind of weird hippo-turtle and said something that sounded like "CHOMPY!!! (THE DOG)" before stomping on the ground. This is why Mike's comment name on the URI! Zone is "Chompy (the dog)".
• One time, Chompy came over to visit Booty. Booty was not a fan.
• Another time, Mike took Chompy to the dog park, but forgot the dog at home. This dog park was several miles from home.
• Another favourite game of Chompy's was "Run as fast as possible away from everyone". I once chased her at a sprint-pace for a quarter of a mile to the side of a busy highway.
• After leaving Tallahassee in 2003, I only saw Chompy a couple more times: Once on a nostalgic trip back to Tallahassee in 2005, once when Mike lived in DC and we went to his apartment to watch a show about Thunderdogs, and once in New Hampshire, where we went for Mike's birthday in 2010.

Rest in peace, Chompy. You were a good pup. Hopefully you are allowed to lick the insides of other dogs' mouths with impunity in dog heaven!