Mic 12 Dead Dog Therapy
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Venues: Brothers
Hosts: Bill Squire
Show: Fight for Your Right
Set Time: 5 Minute
This is the set I did at Brothers Lounge in February of 2026. I'll let it speak for itself.
We had to put my dog down last week.
Growing up, we processed trauma with inappropriate humor or alcoholism, so I figured stand-up was the perfect intersection.
For me, a dog is a member of the family, so I immediately started thinking of other family members I would have rather put down.
Dogs don't borrow money and not pay it back.
She never made a racist joke at Thanksgiving dinner.
She never drank a bottle of wine and hit on my husband.
Yet, she is gone, and Aunt Annie will be coming to Easter.
I posted that we lost our dog on social media, and immediately the neighborhood launched an AI search party with their Ring cameras.
I was going to shut it down, but instead I'm using the footage to make a low-budget documentary called - Motion Detected: The Secret Lives of Cul-de-Sac Wives.
I'm a white suburban woman, so of course I rescued a pitbull-boxer mix and immediately gentrified her.
I named her Mabel,
bought her a sweater,
and planted artisanal grass in the backyard.
We had an electric fence and staked the border out with flags.
She misread this and immediately formed a sovereign nation.
She declared a no-fly zone, so the birds went around.
She started profiling the squirrels.
But it really escalated when a coven of chihuahuas moved in next door.
I mean, there was the obvious language barrier.
Occasionally one of them would sneak in behind the UPS guy.
We didn't know if they had papers.
So we increased the biscuit budget and gave her a mask and put her on that wall.
Mabel was spoiled.
I overtreated.
In the last couple of months, she had become a thick girl.
I occasionally fat-shamed her.
I changed her food to low-fat, and we cut out the pup cups from Starbucks.
She seemed a little out of sorts too.
Someone mentioned she might be depressed.
Let me be clear here: I am from the generation that drank from a hose, and we are just getting our hands around mental health for humans, and now you want me to consider Lexapro for a dog. (head shake)
She was fat and mopey, and I didn't want her to start going down a rabbit hole.
The yard is muddy enough now that it's thawing.
So I made the vet appointment.
Cancer.
She never smoked a day in her life,
ate organic food,
exercised, and got 12 to 15 hours of sleep a night.
Her Oura Ring data was better than mine.
My days of melancholy have prompted my family to ask if I loved the dog more than them.
Yes.
Yes, I absolutely did.
It's a low bar, I told them.
If you ate what I put in front of you, did what I told you to do, and were tail-wagging happy to see me every time I showed up -
I'd give you that kind of love, and I'd let you go to the bathroom in the house.
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