Loss of a pet truly a great heartbreak
- col-leslie-pearce-keating
- January 29, 2024
- 355
I look out the window on a cold winter morning and can hardly see the indentation I know is in the front lawn. I remember just a few years ago when that hole looked like a medium-sized crater in my grass. Although I often stopped Teddy when he was digging in that space, when he got sick, I could object no longer. And what was he digging for? I wondered. I then found out: he’d made a little hollow in the dirt to lie in, perhaps to cool himself from the heat.
I thought about Teddy a lot this week: his big 93-pound body, his thick black fur that fell in curls on his giant tail and across his brow, that huge tongue of his that lapped up water at the summer fleas my daughter and I went to in Cleveland each summer weekend, the way he lay his head in my lap when I cried during the divorce, the way he laughed when I opened the door for him to run through the yard during the pandemic, the way he insisted on carrying trash in his mouth on our long walks, and the way he loved agility — weaving around stakes, jumping over hurdles and scuttling through tunnels.
I’ve always been a sucker for a black dog. His big brown eyes showed his innocence. Even when he chewed the seat belts in my car, I knew he didn’t mean to do wrong. He was frightened when alone, I surmised, which was my fault.
Teddy was the picture of health, from the day my daughter carried the 23-pound baby Golden Doodle out of the shelter to the day she put him in my arms for my birthday.
This week so many people on Facebook wrote about the loss of their precious dogs. There was Tom’s daughter in mourning. And Jan too. Then Jennifer. And, of course, the mama of that sweet Irish wolfhound. I wrote to them all, expressing my sorrow at their losses. Words are lacking. I cannot voice how I feel or what should be said.
Of course, Teddy was not the first dog I’ve lost, but he was the worst. I guess I saw it coming with my older dogs as I saw them failing, suffering from arthritis and other old-age maladies. I didn’t love Teddy the most, but if I had the choice to bring one dog back, even for a day or an hour, it would be him.
When Teddy took ill with osteosarcoma at 18 months in 2020, I could hardly breathe. The amputation of his front leg bought us six months, six months of pain and suffering I would never have opted for had I known better. And then the metastasis occurred in his lungs. He was given a week, a week I cherished, a week I mourned and cried and treated him like a king, which he was, you know, because that boy with no meanness was just a sweet baby — a giant, sweet boy.
On his second birthday that November, he danced with his friends as I threw discounted Halloween toys in the air like confetti. He pranced that day on three legs with two toys in his mouth. And just days later, I lay on the floor of the vet’s office holding him in a blanket as he died.
There’s something about the sadness of losing an animal that brings all of life’s hurts into bright focus — the things you can’t change, those you can’t help, the beauty of the precious one who just died before your eyes, the injustice of all suffering and hatred and hurt, the sweet, sloppy kisses you will never again feel, the furry paws that will never again track in dirt or mud. The heartbreak is unfathomable.
And so to my friends who have loved and lost their canines this week, I will tell you what I do when I lose a dog. First, I cry, foolishly and wholeheartedly. And then I buy a pretty box in floral hues, or in Teddy’s case in black plaid. Then I gather up their toys, their sweaters, their collars and vet records, and I fold them deep inside. I include the bottles of all the meds I gave them because I want to remember how hard I tried. I enclose the cards from caring loved ones so I can remember those sweet gestures too, with a snip of my puppy’s fur. And when I miss Teddy, or Finn, or Hannah most, I open that box and remember.
Because no one ever loves you like a dog. Simply no one.