So. We put our beloved dog down 3 weeks ago yesterday. And it has taken this long for me to write her eulogy. In fact, I didn’t think I would do it at all here, although I have read so many other beautiful eulogies to pets here. I read every single one of them, if I’m here to do so.
But somehow, I didn’t think I needed to do that. Well, turns out, I do. Turns out it has taken me 3 weeks to get past the numbness of her absence. And I, a writer by trade and hope, simply had no words. And when I tried to find the words, they pierced my heart so hard, I knew---a benefit of being older---that I was not ready to write this yet. But, I am now.
Going to start with a bit of back story. From my earliest childhood memories regarding a pet, I wanted a dog. In those days we didn’t have the internet but we did have the Encyclopedia Britannica. Which, if you looked up “dogs” had pages of full color dog breeds. I really didn’t give a fig about the rest of the whole Encyclopedia Brittanica that my parents so lovingly bought for us. I only ever cared about the dog pages, which at a certain age, maybe 6 or so, I started to regularly drag under my parents’ noses, begging them for a dog. A dog like this, points finger to dog pix, or this, points finger to another dog pix, or this, points finger to any and all of them.
It was in my bones and my blood from some of my first memories. This attraction to dogs. Not sure where it came from, just know one day at a very young age, it was there.
And my parents, loving but of their time, thought you actually had to wait to get a dog for your child till they could take care of it. And if it’s one point I want to make beyond my grief here, it’s that this is a foolhardy and ridiculous idea and I hope every parent out there gets over it. Children are SO enriched by having pets, but as the adult in the room, YES, you are going to do the lion’s share of taking care or of ANY pet. In my opinion, you will do so because introducing your children to the love of animals is so important. So don’t expect them to go to college on this when they’re just 5 or 6 or 7 and begin to show their first interest in having a pet. And don’t deny them that experience because they’re not ready to take on the care of a life yet.
What my loving parents did is get me everything BESIDES a dog. OMG, I had gold fish that died, and gerbils that escaped and got trapped and died under the furnace, I had a white rabbit that grew up to be mean in her so wrong life in a cage in our garage. Finally, my parents told me, they took “Angel” to a “Bunny Farm” where she was really happy. I knew they were lying to me even then, but I welcomed the lie.
And then FINALLY, after that last unfortunate experience, all in service of trying to avoid the real experience of having a dog till they thought I was “ready,” and on one of the finest days of my life, they brought home a black French poodle puppy, who we named with great imagination (snark) “Pierre”. And so it began, the train of all my beloved doggers.
I give the back story here because I have well learned that the journey with a dog is so joyful, but you always pay the piper in the end. I have seen my share of dogs I loved over the “rainbow bridge” as some call it, in one way or another. And also because, I’m not sure we’ll ever have another dog, so some history seemed fitting.
Our last and beloved---well, she was a clown. OMG, she was laugh out loud funny. Anyone who has ever had a dog they loved knows that they are all as individual and unique as any leaf on a tree, any bud in a garden, any human being. And her gift was comedic with a fair share of scrappiness, balanced by such sweetness. Oh man, she was a sweet dog.
Stella (and yes she is the namesake of my handle---named after the song “Stella by Starlight,” and specifically, Ray Charle’s version of it, as our beloved dogger before her was named “Ruby” after another Ray Charles song ) was long legged and covered with glorious apricot curly fur, and a face to die for. She hauled us up by our bootstraps after the loss of our beloved last lost dog. A scrappy, hilarious little puppy who didn’t have time for our our grief over our last dog. She wanted us to be hers, and so it was.
The memories of her are a bit too painful for me to write here, but trust that they are long and lovely, and I will get back to them in my reveries, when it doesn’t hurt so much. She was edging towards 17 years old, totally blind, almost deaf. She stopped eating---even human food, her one true love in life perhaps over us, and we knew it was time. So we did the thing we had to do and put her down.
If I was an actor, and needed to cry on demand, I could do so thinking of any of the dogs I’ve lost. And putting down the life you have so loved is particularly brutal, no matter the platitudes everyone offers with good intentions. Of course you know it’s the best thing for your pet, but left behind are we humans so beside ourselves with loss.
Besides our grief over her, hubby and I, are not sure if we will/can go through this again, for many reasons. Too soon to say, but maybe yes, maybe no. And that “maybe no” is the first time I’ve even considered living without a dog since my parents finally relented and the joy of Pierre became part of my childhood life.
And all of that love and joy now seems to have gone by in a flash. Isn’t that the way? But when I can settle the camera in my head to slo-mo, I see the joy of every one of them running towards me with that crazy grin that well loved dogs have.
I guess what I really want to say that isn’t just about my grief, is that if you have children, or grandchildren, neighbors or friends, and you hear someone say “we won’t get them a dog till they can take care of it,” don’t believe them and try to explain it to them. It is not the business of children to take care of another living being, they’re hardly hatched themselves. But, it is a great joy of being a child to experience a pet and learn from the adults in the room how to care for it, eventually and mostly, frankly, when they’re grown up and have a dog of their own. Until then and still, it is a gift to a child that lasts longer than anything else you wrap up for them on birthdays.
And even if you do most of the work, well, that’s what adults do. Meanwhile, a child learns to communicate with, love and learn about something that is so different, yet so much the same as they are when it comes to love. The echoes of that lesson outlive the pain of every pet lost.