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Life With Dogs, Life Without Them [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-04-02
I grew up with dogs.
Maybe you did too.
There were the occasional cats that came into my life, but dogs have been a constant. People come and people go, but dogs are part of my continuum.
If you have a dog, bless you, you understand.
If you have lived with more than one dog at a time, you get it.
Our houses get a little dirtier. Our furniture has fur, protective blankets, toys, and food crumbs. We always have a few tissues and a couple of plastic bags in our pockets.
Our clothing is more utility. The dogs get dirty, and so do we. Dogs play like there’s no tomorrow!
Sometimes, we lose sleep because our buddies get sick. We love them, and we don’t want something bad to get worse. Dogs often go through the worst part of family strife trying to keep the peace. They just want their family, their “pack” to be safe, cared for and healthy. We owe it to them to offer ourselves back when they need our help.
I’m not sure where this story will take you. It is a journey that has taken me through some rough moments and back home again. It is a mixture of feeling and thought about life with a dog, and truly, dog residence isn’t for everyone.
Is this a political piece? Gee, I hope not. But if you are addicted to politico-porn, then, well, you’ll read it through that filter. Please don’t mistake this for one of my usual articles about that other set of creatures everyone talks about at Daily Kos. Those are not pets worth keeping. It doesn’t matter how much or how little you feed them. They will always be unmanageable, and they will always be dangerous, rogue, wild things, not fit to be part of anyone’s pack. So there you are. That’s all you’ll get. This story, and the millions of stories about dogs, and cats as well, deserve better.
Dogs anchor those of us who keep them, love them, live with them, rejoice in their existence. Big, small, overweight, skinny, each with a distinct personality, but mostly, creatures that steadfastly adhere to a code of canine conduct that some humans study.
Cats are also not for everyone, but they run right up there with our dogs. I’ve had two. Both were the loves of my life, even though I had allergies to them.
Perhaps, having no animals - fish, snakes, turtles, birds or creatures of any kind - suits you just fine. Caring for others, especially other life forms you consider as lesser, well, that’s not everyone’s thing.
Maybe you don’t have time for this story right now, but perhaps, you’ll bookmark it, come back another time, and that would be just fine.
TL;DR? Sure. But there’s no such thing as “too much dog” if you keep them around.
Dogs come into this world like other creatures, with no say in the matter, and often, their destiny is driven by the needs or demands of those who put a leash on them and require their labor. But for those of us who have kept animals close to us, we see not an animal, but a kindred spirit. If you own a dog, you know that you do not own anyone. You merely put your name on human paperwork and agree to be there as a life-long companion for an animal that thousands of years ago, curled up near a human campground, approached a human settlement, became conditioned over the millennia to stay close by, and in return gained the honorific, “Man’s Best Friend.”
Dogs teach us without our being aware of it.
We learn about sticking with our besties. We learn about the importance of play, regular exercise, careful diet and good hydration. We learn about empathy. We learn that how we respond to intolerable pain experienced by another living thing matters. We experience unbridled joy and enthusiasm. We develop lifelong bonds and trust. We learn about the immediate consequences that come with being cruel and treating others with disrespect. We learn that being clean is a good thing. We learn that sometimes, is is okay to get a whole lotta dirty and have fun doing it!
Cash as a pup, 2009
What animal care, and all pet ownership provides, is an opportunity for us to get out of our own heads. They depend on us. We provide what they require, not because it is a burden, but because of the positive strokes we get in return for loving another creature. They are careful with us, and in return, we gain their respect and admiration. This is the time-honored practice of building relationships with the rest of the living world.
A moment comes, inevitably...
It is a time of saying, “Goodbye, old friend...”
For some of us, this end is unthinkable. We’ll do anything to extend and delay the obligation of death. Grief is the final lesson that our pets, and especially, our dogs and cats, will teach us.
Cash was a powerhouse. He was everything you could imagine in a dog. Best friend? Much more than that. He was a beloved member of our family and included in every activity. He was fully capable of expressing himself, and he had his way of telling us everything he wished for, needed, expected and sometimes, demanded.
He had a temper. Oh, yes, his early days were quite different from the elder statesman that he had become. But he was playful, intelligent, brash at times, and he had a giant, albeit slightly tweaked, heart. He understood so much, even without words being said.
In short, he created a life filled with love, a world in which he refused to take “NO” for an answer, and he drew many people to him who would want to get to know him better.
When he died last year, the lead-up to it was not sudden. We knew very well that his time to leave was upon us. At just less than fifteen years, he had acquired all the merit badges of living a long life — heart disease, arthritis, kidney problems, general exhaustion, changes in appetite, and of course, a need to sleep a lot. When your vet says to you, “You know, you have an old dog...” and there’s that pregnant pause before the next words come out, the planning stage for everything that comes next kicks into gear.
The best meds, the best treatment, the right food, and overly frequent checkups were all part of that plan. We, like many dog owners, ask our veterinarians to use their training and skills to hold them with us, “just a little longer, doc...”
Cancer stepped in. The process gained speed. Damned cancer...
I thought we had more time.
I think, that is a very common feeling, “No! Not today, not now, I’m not ready to say goodbye to him, perhaps, not ever.”
His balance and torpor got worse. His appetite dwindled down to eating human baby food from a jar. There were weight loss, bad nights of sleep, soiled floors, frequent meds changes and hospitalizations.
When the final act was upon us, the telephone call to our vet was so hard, the phone felt like it weighed one hundred pounds. We all knew what we had to do. We had briefed for this many times. We had in less stressed moments known we had “arrangements” to make. That last day, he walked in from his yard time, laid down, and simply could not get up again. The fear and pain in his eyes was abundantly clear. I felt a little guilt for not helping him across that Rainbow Bridge a little sooner. It did not matter. His moment had come. There was no old friend left inside of the struggling canine cadaver that he had become, only a wish from him for us to abide, let him go, with dignity, and with comfort.
If you must put your pet to sleep, please, be in the room with them, please do what we did. Please do not be ashamed to cry, please be real with your dearest friend. Don’t abandon this final responsibility. It matters. It hurts so much, but it matters.
Eleanor, 2005-2024
It was a really rough year for our family’s pets. My daughter’s cat, after nineteen years, had become so sick, so tired, too weak to even eat. Her partner’s little sausage doggie had become equally weak and too tired to go on after seventeen years of careful tending to his every need. What we must do in those moments, it both breaks our hearts and also, helps us to mend.
Three “Best Friend Funerals” is a lot to manage when they happen almost all at once...
Where do the spirits of our animals go? Are they merely our memories, or are they something of a metaphysical existence that we simply haven’t the science to comprehend? Do their ghosts linger, waiting for another opportunity, or is that spiritual energy redistributed to other people, places, things, creatures? I went through the motions of living, tolerated the waves of sadness crashing over me, and felt this powerful disconnect from a life with a dog’s spirit always nearby. I looked lovingly and longingly at other dog owners, grateful that they had one another, and spending my year with intense grief that most of us reserve for loss of a human life.
Cash in his prime, three years old
But if you had known him, you would agree — he approximated being human, even though he was crafted into a dog’s body with a magnificent coat.
We cleaned up the food, toys that would probably never be played with again in our home, put his leash and collar into a safe place. We donated nearly all of it, and yet, there were bits and pieces we simply could not part with. Some of it was random. Some of it was, “Perhaps, if we can stay healthy, there might come a time for another...”
That sound of silence without him was absolutely deafening.
After a while, it did not tear at me to receive the many calls, letters, offerings of condolences, and the acknowledgement from our veterinary friends and providers that we had definitely gone above and beyond the call of duty with his care. But it was a very long while.
I shifted myself from being attended to by a loyal friend to being the only person in the world that was fully trusted by him. There’s this weight that settles in. It is a day-to-day management process. Some days, the burden is not so bad. Other days, it is crushing. Again, this is a dog being your teacher, for all those things you’ll need to be present for when the humans in your life get sick, fail, falter and die. And they are happy to share their passage with you. They know you will be saddened. They would be, too if you were to die before they did…
After his death, I moved through my world numb. All the places where we walked together, the stops on car rides that we now drove past instead of getting out for him to stretch and do his business, the tables outside fast food joints where we would share a small bit of a french fry or a really small bit of hamburger just to keep him happy, the doggie friends he would never see again or play with, the people he came to know and wanted to be near, all of that was a blur.
He was my ninth dog. While we loved each and every one of them, he stood out as incomparable. But life continues. We must all move on, carry our grief, no matter how big or small.
Epilogue -
It touches on the divine, and while I do not believe in reincarnation, I do believe that there are things we simply don’t have the tools to measure or interpret reliably. There are roughly 20,000 genes in the canid genome, across 39 pairs of chromosomes. Coat variation, innate levels of prey drive, interpretive and command recognition, protective instincts, even down to the vocalizations are encoded in this magnificent genetic warehouse and reference library. Science can provide for sorting out of what we desire in a creature. It can give us clones of the last dog we owned, well, almost. Yes, we could have simply gone and found another cattle dog — the breed is simply awesome! — but it would not be a physically good fit in our later life existence. Humans get old, too…
When our emotions and another creature’s synchronize, there’s that one moment when you just know that the who-what-when-where-how are at the nexus. It isn’t rational. It is that one critical moment when you must decide to abandon the feelings, or simply go with them and see where they will take you.
Bailey, an incredible bouncing ball of energy!
Bailey came in to the adoption pen where new doggie parents get to see who might want to come home with them. In less than 30 seconds, this demure little terrier-chihuahua mix decided that my lap was where she wanted to be. She seemed to know me better than I know myself, and that’s just irrational. It has to be my clothing, it has to be logical, rational and there’s something about Cash that had to be residual that she could identify. But the clothing has been through fifty cycles of laundry. I shower all the time. What does this eleven pound creature know that I simply do not, and have no way to comprehend?
That was three weeks ago.
When I say, “She’s home...” I mean that the energies, the behaviors, the uncannily similar responses to everything and everywhere around our house is synchronized with who she innately is. Is it because her little sniffer is picking up on all the various traces of him left behind? Do dogs leave a material spoor after they die? Is there something we could scientifically approach and rationally manage? After all, her birth date precedes his death. It just doesn’t make any sense that the fit would be so exact and so perfect.
But yet, it is ...
It is redemption.
It is absolution.
It is a testament to our love of dogs and all creatures big, small, wild, wonderful, and moving through this amazing thing we call our world. It is the universe offering forgiveness and permission to move on.
Dogs belong with us. They started on a journey through space and time so long ago that we merely take their companionship for granted as a part of daily life. Sixty-five million American households cannot be wrong about the value and importance of a dog, or dogs, in the human story. Many people have more than one. Many simply cannot live without having one in their lives.
Apparently, that includes me.
There are plastic bags back in my pockets, plenty of tissues, rags for wiping down a dirty little girl, new toys, new food and new things to learn. But the old familiar presence of a spirit that guides, teaches and protects has returned to our home.
Welcome back, old friend, in smaller form, may your spirit abide here in great comfort and never feel left out or alone. I would wish this homecoming on anyone.
[END]
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