A star of books and murals, Charley was a Tri-City icon

Charley was a master of zen-like calm — a gentle giant who was innately and perpetually unruffled.

He was a driftwood sculptor, a pizza thief, a chaser of rabbits.

He was the star of a comic book cover and mural, a celebrity on park walks and beach strolls. Even mugged with a U.S. senator.

He loved chin scratches, swimming in the river and the ocean, and sitting in his chair at Adventures Underground in Richland — the one covered in white hair.

He was a dog, yes — a 90-pound Irish wolfhound/German shepherd mix who was tall enough to lay his head on the dining room table. But he lived a sweeping, singular life.

He seemed to have things figured out.

“He (took in) the world. He liked to observe things, and he liked to play,” said Logan Kaufman, who adopted him 11 years ago. “It may be weird to say, but I admired my dog. I looked up to him.”

Many others did, too.

Charley, who recently died just shy of his 15th birthday, was the Tri-Cities’ most famous four-legged resident — winning legions of fans as the shop dog at the bookstore.

When he passed, Kaufman wrote a touching Facebook post that went viral, with more than 1,400 likes and hundreds of comments and shares.

A celebration of Charley’s life is planned at 4 p.m. Saturday at the store. The public is invited.

Kaufman, Adventures Underground co-owner, brought Charley home in January 2007. The pup was 4 at the time, and he’d had a rough start.

A neglectful owner kept him in the backyard, with little attention or affection, eventually surrendering him to the pound. Charley was called “Muck” back then.

Kaufman spotted the pup on an adoption website and drove six hours to Roseburg, Ore., to pick him up.

He came up with a more dignified name: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson II, after the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. (Dodgson used the pen name Lewis Carroll).

Adventures Underground opened in the Uptown Shopping Center in June 2007, and Charley was there with Kaufman every day.

Kaufman envisioned the pup hanging out in the office or behind the counter, but Charley had his own ideas. He’d leap out into the store, eventually claiming a cozy chair up front as his own.

As the shop grew, so did Charley’s profile. Customers looked forward to seeing him. They’d seek him out, ask about him, recognize him on the streets.

They’d try to pet him, something Charley wasn’t crazy about. They’d also sneak him treats, something he liked much better.

Artist Herb Leonhard immortalized Charley on a mural outside the store. Best-selling writer Patricia Briggs featured him on a limited edition cover of one of her graphic novels.

Charley also once had an audience with a top elected official. U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., spoke at the store in 2012 and made sure to get some face time with the pooch.

In a Herald photo capturing the moment, Murray looks delighted. Charley looks, as always, pretty chill.

That was his way.

“I call him my Zen guru, half-jokingly,” Kaufman said. “If I was stressed out, I would just come over to him, and he’d be sitting in his chair, stoic and silent, and I’d sit with him for a few minutes” and feel better.

For Charley, the best days were sitting in that chair with Kaufman nearby. Or snoozing by the shop’s front door. Or going for a swim in the river or a run with Kaufman’s wife, Molly Mooney.

Once, a rabbit hopped by the store and Charley gave chase. Kaufman caught up to him near the Spudnut Shop, trying to figure out how to squeeze under the car where the rabbit was hiding. That was a thrill.

Another time, Kaufman and some friends left a family-size pizza briefly unattended on the counter. Charley wasted no time woofing it down. Another banner day for him.

Charley also loved driftwood. On Oregon Coast vacations, he’d drag it around, stack it in strange piles, return it to the water. It stumped his people, but made sense to him. Charley did his own thing.

As he got older, health problems set in. Charley retired from Adventures Underground a while back — an occasion marked by news coverage and a grand farewell.

“I feel truly fortunate for every day I had with him, and I think that the love he received over the years helped to keep him youthful well beyond expectations for a dog of his type,” Kaufman wrote in his Facebook post. “... Thank you all for sharing in Charley’s adventure.”

Losing Charley has been so hard, Kaufman said. In their 11 years together, man and dog were rarely apart. Now, Charley’s chair is forever empty. The couch where he slept at home is empty.

“When people say, ‘my dog’ — I always think, that’s weird for Charley. He wasn’t my dog. He was my companion, my friend,” Kaufman said.

His calm, his way of taking things in without judgment — “I want to take more of that,” Kaufman said.

“I have been working on it a bunch. That calmness, that serenity — I have a hard time with it. But let’s do that more. I think Charley had (stuff) figured out from Day 1. Just watch and observe and be non-judgmental. To be like Charley is a good goal, I think, for everyone.”

This story was originally published February 2, 2018 at 12:56 PM with the headline "A star of books and murals, Charley was a Tri-City icon."