Wednesday, the white-collared, shade-wearing daredevil showgirl of a Chihuahua who’s been the face of the Hang 8 Dog Surfing competition in Flagler Beach since its first swell in 2022, has died. She was around 10 or 11 years old.
Eric Cooley, the Flagler Beach business owner, city commissioner, and founder–with former Mayor Suzie Johnston and Wednesday–of the competition, announced her death Monday, hours after she’d passed around midnight, on her terms. She’d developed congestive heart failure a year and a half ago, and took a turn for the worse before the weekend.
It is not just a dog’s loss, but the sort of loss that could impact one of Flagler County’s fast-developing and popular annual events and attractions. It is the second time in less than three weeks that a dog of renown in Flagler County has died. The Sheriff’s Office marked the death of police dog Kyro in October.
Wednesday had become locally and regionally famous, first as the mascot of the Hang 8 competition, then as the “first stop” for most who turned up to the competition, Cooley said, then as a Kardashian-like celebrity who traded yaps for attention wherever she went, not just in the county. Even Alexa knew her: the virtual assistant could rattle off her bio, if asked.
She’d get recognized at other dog-surfing events, and she elicited a wide range of emotions, as the responses to Cooley’s announcement attested. A few of the 150-some online responses by late this afternoon: “a legend and her legacy will live on,” “We all loved her so much,” “Wednesday was loved very much and made a huge impact on all she met,” “she made me smile and giggle more times than I can count,” and from Amy Carotenuto, the executive director of the Flagler Humane Society, “Wednesday brought us all Hang 8, which has been so amazing for Flagler County. (I know you and Suzie worked on that too, but I’m giving Wednesday the credit.)” She also called Wednesday, “like all dogs–the best dog ever.”
“Wednesday was kind of, we’ll call it the soul of it,” Cooley said of the Hang 8 event. “Wednesday brought the energy, and it’s what made Hang 8 so unique: go out there, be friendly. A lot of her personality was built into the competition with her being the mascot, she set the tone for it all.”
For Cooley, it was another loss in a year of losses, starting with his father in January and two other dogs since–Chewey, who was 21, and Gigi, lost about a month ago. They were all rescues. He’s left with one: Tia, a more introspective Chihuahua.
Wednesday had walked into Cooley’s life about eight years ago when a tenant of the trailer park behind the 7-Eleven store Cooley owns on State Road A1A asked him to take her. The man’s girlfriend had tired of Wednesday’s barking.
It’s always been true. Wednesday barked, and barked, and barked, but she did so for attention and because she liked people, Cooley said. The two of them would go off around town on his golf cart, and “she’d just scream her head off at anyone that went by.” She’d do the same way off in the surf as they’d be practicing on her custom-made surfboard. She’d yell at anyone walking on the beach.
She loved to dress up, which is what inspired the costume contest at Hang 8. (She wore her skeleton hoodie on her last Halloween.) She had her own pair of shades, no straps. It was a miniature set of hippie shades designed for a doll. “She’d wear them all day long and not knock them off,” Cooley said. She was named for Wednesday Addams of the Addams family, though she had none of the other Addams’s pessimism and all of her loyalty and friendship.
Everything was on her terms. “She didn’t want to do something, she’d let you know it,” Cooley said.
About a year and a half ago she developed a cough, which is very unusual in dogs. Cooley took her to the vet. She had a collapsing trachea, not uncommon with chihuahuas, but the vet noticed a heart murmur, which quickly progressed into congestive heart failure. Medication slowed the decline, but it was inevitable, if still more devastating than Chewey’s death.
“It seemed too early for Wednesday,” Cooley said. He and the vet were with her for six hours as she struggled Sunday night. She wasn’t put down. She just died on her time. “If there’s any silver lining at all, I wasn’t at work when it happened, I was with her, she was in my arms. If there’s an ideal way, this would be it, even though there is no ideal way.”
The accumulation of losses capped by Wednesday’s has put a pause on plans, even the Hang 8 competition scheduled for next spring, what would have been the fifth. It may well happen, but Cooley isn’t 100 percent there: the work it takes, the need for volunteers, who are always in short supply, and the emotional difficulties of the past year have all taken a toll.
There’s not been a lack of ideas contributed by Wednesday fans to center some sort of celebration around her memory, perhaps pushing Cooley toward another Hang 8 edition. “Most likely we’re going to continue it right now, still not 100 percent sure, still reeling from all this,” Cooley said.
There would definitely be a paddle out, for instance, Cooley said. (Wednesday is having a private cremation, with no decision yet on the disposal of ashes.) His voice broke several times during an interview this afternoon, perhaps not just due to Wednesday’s loss, but the whole year.
He talked about biding time “until that next special one comes along, but I’m kind of not in a rush,” Cooley said. “We’re kind of taking a step back to recover from all of this. Three dogs and a dad in one year, it’s a lot.”
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