Dogs…where would we be without them?

Where would I be without my dogs? I’ve thought a lot about this – ever since I lost my first dog. I got my first dog when I was 20 years old. I had just moved out of my parent’s house and what better way to express my newly found freedom than doing something my father explicitly forbid? Oh, yes…I got a dog – a 10 week old female Dalmatian puppy. I named her Gigger and she turned out to be my best friend, constant companion and counselor all rolled in one. She brought me joy, amusement and companionship every day we were together. She was skilled at consoling me when I was down and I always relaxed when I watched her carefree, goofy antics. All I had to do was look in her eyes and I felt at home. She was always with me – she even moved with me to Indiana and New York when I was in undergrad and graduate school. She wasn’t a family dog – she was my dog and we were fortunate enough to have many years together.

When your dog gets older it is so hard to watch its decline. My once active, energetic chipmunk-chasing, mole-killing dog started to move slowly and had a hard time getting up from a lying position. Do they understand what is happening to them? Do they know what it means to age? Dog owners are always putting human thoughts and emotions on their pets. I suppose I am no different. Can a dog make comparisons? Do they understand that what they once were able to do they can no longer do?

Just the idea of losing a beloved dog is something dog owners obsess about and dread – in some cases – years before they lose their pup. When the dog starts to slow down or receives an unfortunate diagnosis from the Vet, the fear of losing their dog becomes a reality. For some of us, it is just too hard to consider how we will go on without the dog’s constant source of love, acceptance and companionship – that’s how much our dogs mean to us.

Gig was 14 ½ years old when she was euthanized. She was suffering from kidney failure and her quality of life just wasn’t there. I have never felt the intense heartache as I did when she was euthanized. I had lost a grandparent, aunts and uncles – but the grief I felt over the loss of Gig couldn’t be compared – it was so much more intense. I was inconsolable and felt as if I was cut adrift from what was right and familiar. Green was no longer green – it was red. A square was no longer a square, but a circle. The world had somehow shifted – everything looked strange through my eyes without Gig by my side.

I was dogless for 7 days before I adopted a Golden Retriever rescue named Hailey. She was almost 4 years old and came with an uncertain history – two contradicting stories of why she no longer had a home. I didn’t care. I just couldn’t live without a dog. At first it was simply having another dog around me. On the day that Gig was euthanized I even ‘borrowed’ my sister’s dog, Zoe, because simply having a dog near me made me feel better. But after a bit of time, I started to see all the special qualities of Hailey Dailey as well.

I had a tough time getting over the loss of Gig – even with Hailey by my side. It certainly lessened the heartache – well, maybe not lessened the heartache of losing Gig, but it gave me a new joy having adopted Hailey. I know some people feel like they are betraying their deceased dog by getting another dog so quickly. I never had that problem. It didn’t take me very long after adopting Hailey to understand that Gig wasn’t the only dog that I could bond with – all dogs are unique and precious in their own way. And the connection dogs and people have – the bond – is what makes the dogs so dear and so important to us.

There were quite a few people that professed that they could not understand why I was grieving over the demise of a dog. It was not like my Dad died or something, right? Sure, they were okay with a few tears right after the fact, but days or a couple weeks later I was still upset about it? They just couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me.

I was starting to wonder if there was something wrong with me too. Why was this so hard? Sure I loved my dog and missed her but why was the grief so intense? My grandmother died when I was 14 years old. I grew up with and was partly raised by my maternal grandmother – she lived with us. I never remember a time when my Gram was not around. I grieved her death, but it wasn’t as intense as the death of my dog.

How was it possible that the death of Gig hit me harder than the death of my grandmother? I loved my Gram – she was very much on the antisocial side, tough to get to know and at times really rather grouchy. But she could also be nurturing, comforting and chatty as well. I never really knew which version of her I would encounter on any given day. She was difficult to deal with because of this uncertainty, but that did not mean that I did not love her. So – perhaps I just loved my dog more? Is the love that you feel for your pup even the same love that you feel for another human?

We outwardly profess our love for our dogs in all sorts of ways. Driving down I-94 yesterday morning I saw numerous bumper stickers from love-struck dog owners: a paw print in which the center had written ‘I Love My Dogs’ and another stated, ‘Who rescued Who?’, ‘Golden Retriever Mom and Dad on board’ and ‘I Love My Shih Tzu’. The pet industry is over a $60 billion industry in the US – not too shabby for all the Mollies, Baileys and Coopers out there. My personal favorite confession of dog-love is a t-shirt I saw once printed with the caption, ‘How To Handle Stress like A Dog: If you can’t eat it or play with it…then pee on it and walk away’.

I don’t see dogs as furry ‘little’ people. I do not dress my dogs in clothes – nor do I wish I knew what my dog was thinking. Dogs are dogs. But I also have a hard time thinking about love in terms of degrees. It is hard for me to grasp that I loved my dog more than I loved my Gram. Love is love – it either is there or it isn’t there. Nor do I see the love of a dog as a different kind of love than the love we have for our friends or family. Love is love is love.

Relationships with people can be so much more complicated and quite often – messy. With a dog what you see if what you get. There are no words to misconstrue, no lines to read between, as there are with people. No jealousy, judgment, hate or greed to deal with – the ‘lower’ aspects of humanity do not exist with dogs. I have never had a dog that held a grudge for years like some people I know. What you see is what you get with a dog.

I finally came to the conclusion that I simply valued the bond I had with Gig more than the bond I had with my grandmother. But I was still intrigued with the question of why. I don’t know about your dog, but all of my dogs are capable of the most disgusting things – eating dead and decomposing animals or rolling in wild animal’s excrement. None of which I have ever seen a human friend of mine do. Can you imagine having a friend over and watching him eat the dead bug on the driveway or roll in possum poo in your yard? You’d think twice about inviting that friend back. Yet we welcome and share our homes and in some case our beds with our dogs.

Our dogs aren’t particularly useful either, or at least my dogs have never been very helpful. If you have an accident your dog certainly isn’t going to drive you to the ER, nor will your dog make and have dinner waiting for you when you get home from a hard day at work. Jasper, one of our Golden Retrievers, does an awesome job of stealing pillows and leaving them all over the house. I don’t find that particularly useful – every night having to find my pillow before I go to sleep. Schatz does a great job of keeping the squirrels and chipmunks off the front patio, but I can’t say that I find much use to that – although Schatzi most definitely carries on like she is performing a life-saving service. Gig did an awesome job killing moles, but the holes she created when she dug them up sort of cancelled out the helpfulness of killing the mole.

Dogs and humans have been in companionship for around 10,000 years – which is when dogs started appearing in human artwork and in our burial grounds – some ancient dog burials also included grave goods to help the dog on it’s journey to the afterlife. Dogs have been valued and loved by humans for a very long time.

I’ve read numerous articles that state the varying health benefits of dog ownership or even articles that proclaim that when we gaze into our dog’s eyes our bodies release the hormone oxytocin – a chemical that is also released when a mother gazes into her infant’s eyes. I don’t doubt anything that these articles claim. But at the same time I have a hard time thinking about the love for my dog in terms of scientific explanations – it’s just too disconnected for me.

I have a hunch the reason why my dogs have meant so much to me is much more intuitive. Dogs and humans might be two different species but one thing we have in common is we both have a deep-rooted, intrinsic need for connection – to be loved and to love and this is what matters most in life. I value what my dogs show me, by example, each and every day: simple things matter most, spending time with the people that you care about and accepting the world as it is and loving it freely.

Dogs always see the world with ‘fresh eyes’. Jasper can find 50 holes to put his head down at the park and each and every one is just as exciting and new as the first. Life is always exhilarating and fresh for a dog. Dogs live for the moment – not worrying about the future or regretting what they said to the poodle down the street the evening before – they take life as it is. A dog’s trust for his human is unparalleled in the world of human interaction. We humans have to earn another’s trust with time and diligence – a dog’s trust has to be lost over time, as dogs are so forgiving for human slights. The world would definitely be a kinder, friendlier and less judgmental place if humans were more like their dogs.

It is such a human thing to want to know ‘why’. I doubt that any of my dogs ever wonder why they loved me. Score another point for dogs and their mindset of living in the moment. But maybe – just maybe – I am to the point in which it just doesn’t matter so much. Perhaps I need to be more dog-like in this regard and just accept what it is in front of me and let the ‘why’ roll off my back. Whether it matters or not – I do know this – I simply cannot imagine my world without a dog or two or three in it.