I remember opening the box cross-legged on the living room floor. Winston, my young English Setter, hovered over my shoulders anxious to eat and rip apart any item I handed him next.

We had been subscribers to BarkBox for a few months at that point. As I opened our newest package, I carefully pulled out a fluffy mammoth toy. At that time, Winston was the only dog in our household and it was from that moment on, he and his mammoth were inseparable.

Back then, as a young setter – I would have called Winston a destroyer. He would require hours of physical exercise or mental stimulation to remove the desire. (If you’ve ever had a setter between the age of 0 to 2 years old, you get it.)

Toilet paper was his medium of choice but anything with a little fluff did the trick. We couldn’t keep dog toys, dog beds, comforters in tact. Well … except for this mammoth.

I couldn’t understand it. It was the first toy he grabbed to greet us when we got home each day, and the only one he would pull out of his toy bin on his own. He knew the phrase: “Where’s your mammoth?” And yet, he refused to destroy it. I remember browsing Bark’s site one day, spotting the mammoth online, and I was shocked to learn its name was Winston, too. What were the odds? It was surreal to me. The only toy he never destroyed shared his name. Over the years, Winston added several mammoths to his collection and kept them all safe. If friends passed one in a store, they had to send it on. Bark also sent us several for free one day. It became his thing. We coined his original “MOE” for “mammoth over everything.”

Before the chemo would ravage his hair, people often called Winston a wooly mammoth because of his thick coat. My favorite time was when a pair of hikers who passed us on a trail said he looked like Mr. Snuffleupagus. I had to Google it once we got signal back at the car and we couldn’t stop laughing. What a spot on reference.

Winston still knew the word mammoth and would bring it to you when you would ask. He loved to play with his mammoth during a good game of tug or loved to be chased with it in his mouth. He loved to shake it back and forth in front of you as long as you egged him on with a “shake it up, shake it up” while he did it. He held it in his mouth each day when we got home from work, offering it to us as a “welcome back” gift. What a generous boy he was. We held it during every play session, a tug of war dancing around the living room to Taylor Swift as Pop Pop cooked dinner. His favorite toy to grab.

When Winston was diagnosed with hemangiosarcoma, dog owners from all over the world gifted their companions a Winston mammoth in support. Friends who welcome new pups into their lives or transport rescue dogs make sure a new mammoth toy awaited them. The mammoth emoji is the top used one in my chats. His name became synomous with the creature.

But as the cancer and chemo became harder, he mostly enjoyed a good hard nap with his mammoth as a head rest. When he wasn’t feeling great and didn’t want to get up for a vet appointment, the vets would offer to bring his mammoth along. It is what got him up and out of the car. His mammoth went in to every vet appointment. The vets would call with an update during his chemo sessions, and always say, “He’s doing well – just snoozling with his mammoth.”

It’s a stuffed animal, sure, but it also was his friend. A lifelong one.

It held his head before, during, and after each chemo, blood-draw, X-ray, surgery, and lastly, his euthanasia. And I held onto it tight every night as I sobbed myself to sleep after we had to say goodbye to him.

The week after his death a dear coworker gifted me a mammoth charm bracelet which I wear daily now. Winston’s “kicking cancer’s butt” bandana our vet team gave us is now worn by one of his mammoths in his favorite room. Our first Christmas without him, I carried the toy into the photo session for our family photos with it. I couldn’t see us not including him somehow.

Six months after Winston passed, my husband and I found ourselves crying in the car on the way to the grocery store talking about Winston’s death. We wiped our eyes and swallowed the grief down where no one could see so we could browse the aisles for the week’s groceries. And there it was, leaning out of a pop up display – a mammoth toy. Thanks for saying hello, Winnie. We miss you every day.

To shop Winston’s mammoth, click here.