Last night we said goodbye to our family dog.
It’s hard to know how to say goodbye to a pet. Some like to hyperbolize pet ownership and say that it’s like losing a child or losing a family member. Others will dismiss the pet owner’s pain, saying it’s just a dog/cat. Either response to the loss of a beloved pet is incomplete.
She was the third family dog we've said goodbye to over the last 30 years. I am a father and I know that losing my son would break me in a way from which I would not be able to fully recover. That being said, my dog was with me for almost 14 years. In these 14 years, I can count on a single hand the number of times I’ve cried. Losing her is one of them.
The relationship between and a pet and their owner is unique and is not like any type of family relationship or friendship. When entering into pet ownership, the assumption and the expectation is that you raise them from infancy to adulthood. You see them reach their physical and cognitive peak and then watch them slowly decline into old age. Eventually, inevitably, we see them die. It does not matter that this is a given and an expectation. It hurts, badly.
I’m not completely sure why losing a pet is so painful. I think it is partially because the relationship with one’s pet is extremely one-sided. We buy them food and toys, we take care of their health, and pet them whenever they want. The sacrifices we make for our pets are not reciprocated or paid back by them. They enjoyment and happiness we see in them makes us happy, but it’s not meant to be repayment by them. I believe that the love we feel for our pets is one of the purest forms of love that we are able to experience. I do not mean that we love them more than we do most people. By “pure love” I mean that it is a sacrificial love that expects nothing in return and the actions we take are for their happiness. Losing that pure relationship is painful because we know how much we sacrifice for them, and truly sacrificial love is life-giving and emotionally rejuvenating.
When we get to the point of finally having to let go, I believe that the hardest part is not being able to fully and accurately communicate to them how we feel. I don’t know any pet owners who don’t speak to their pets as if they are human and can understand us. We do it, in part, because it’s fun. We also do it because we hope that, somehow, they will understand. When it’s time to say goodbye, we tell them how much we love them and will miss them knowing full well they don’t understand what we are saying. We must hope that, throughout their lifetime, they experienced and understand our love for them by the way we cared for them.
Regrettably, I was not able to be with her at the very end. I always called her my dog, but she was my parents’ dog, I just continued to claim her as my own even after I graduated college, got married, and adopted a dog of my own. For the first 4 years of her life, I was in college, coming home during the summer and during the holidays. She slept in my bed with me every night when I was home. After I graduated and moved out, I frequently took care of her when my parents were out of town. She knew that whenever I was around that she could get on the furniture with me, even though she was never allowed on the furniture with my parents. Whenever I spent the night at my parents’ house, she would hop onto the bed with me. She was always my puppy.
Her health had been declining over the last several years, but her final morning she seemed to be her normal self. She went for her normal walk in the woods, played with my dad before work, and snoozed on her bed near my mom. By that evening, everyone knew the inevitable outcome. My parents were both with her to the very end, holding her close in a private room at the emergency vet as her eyes closed for the last time. Even with the pain she was feeling and the uncertainty of being in a strange room at the vet, as long as my parents were with her, she was calm, finding safety and comfort in their arms.
I like to think that one day she will be reunited with my parents in heaven. She will be running around like crazy, her body fully restored to health. One day she will hear her favorite phrase in the world, “Dad’s home!” She will run towards him with every ounce of speed that she has and, much to my mom’s chagrin, will give my dad a giant lick on the face.
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/dwerp7/thoughts_on_saying_goodbye_to_a_pet/
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