o understand the depths of her sorrow, it’s best to understand the source of her pain, a big blond bear of a dog with an unimaginably large head, snowshoe-sized paws, and a habit of making such a racket whenever he sprawled on the floor that he sounded like a building tumbling down.
Otis was a golden retriever, but never the type to bound across an open field after a ball. “He’d chase it maybe once, then just stand and pose,” said his lifelong partner, Elizabeth Warren.
What Otis preferred was to variously lumber and meander through the Cambridge neighborhood where he didn’t so much live as preside. There were hills to climb, people to greet, and a favorite body of water, Fresh Pond, to slowly circle in the first light of the morning and as the last red light faded from the evening sky. This was Otis’s world.
He was a virtually inseparable companion to Warren and her husband, Bruce Mann — a serene, noble presence in their offices at Harvard University, on errands, and on the kitchen floor, where Warren would always run her fingers absently through his fur as she spoke on the phone.
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Otis went to Washington with Warren during the depths of the financial crisis, and he loved it, not because it transformed his master into a national figure, but because their apartment building had elevators, meaning he didn’t have to negotiate any pesky stairs.
Elizabeth Warren posted this photo of herself and her dog Otis on Oct. 28 on Facebook.
Elizabeth Warren posted this photo on Facebook of herself and her dog Otis on Oct. 28.
He was with Warren in fall 2011 when she declared her campaign for the Senate. He was there as controversies flared, as accusations were leveled, as attack ads filled the airwaves. Polls rose and fell, criticisms alternated with compliments, but always there was Otis, blinking excitedly as Warren came through the door at the end of the day and always ready for a walk.
Later each night, they would park themselves on the living room couch, Warren in the middle, her husband to her left, Otis sprawled to her right, his cannonball head resting on her leg as he slept through their favorite TV shows.
Otis loved Halloween because of all the kids who would come to his door and inevitably want to pat him. CLICK HERE
