“I knew this day would come but I thought it would never come.” With these words and with his voice broken by tears Jonathan Graziano Saturday announced the death of Noodle, a pug who had become a star on TikTok.
At the time of the dog’s disappearance, his owner’s profile boasted over four and a half million followers, to which must be added the two hundred and seventy-seven thousand on Instagram. The announcement of his death received nearly four million hearts and over 170,000 comments. The #NoBonesDay hashtag went trending on Twitter in the US on Saturday.
Noodle was fourteen and a half years old and had been adopted by Jonathan seven years ago. Fame came last year, when Jonathan started posting videos on TikTok of the pug deciding whether to get up or stay in his kennel to sleep. In this second case, he would have been a No bones day: literally “a day without the bone”, metaphorically a day in which to put aside the anxiety of success and take care of yourself by resting.
The curious behavior of the now elderly dog had inspired an illustrated children’s book entitled precisely Noodles and the no bones day, written by Jonathan himself with art by Dan Tavis. The book wanted to lightly convey the message that it’s okay not to always be 100% and that in certain moments it’s not a drama to put one’s ambitions aside.
Noodle has been hailed via social media by other four-legged celebrities: another Instagram-famous pug, Doug the Pug (three million seven hundred thousand followers), wrote that “Noodle made the internet and the world better places”.
Jonathan closed his message by thanking his followers for the love his pug has received. “Taking care of Noodle has been the privilege of my life.”
