Coping with the Death of Your Dog

My Experiences - Henry

Coping with the death of your dog can be a devastating experience. You have often spent a huge amount of time with them, and they are not only baked into your routine, they are your routine. Your life can revolve around them, so when you suffer the loss of a dog, the life you knew can disappear when they do.

Over these pages I will be writing about dog loss from my own experiences, because I know personally how debilitating the death of a dog can be, how it affects you in so many ways, and how it sometimes feels like those feelings will never end.

I spent many years rescuing and adopting sick and elderly cats, the ones no one was adopting and that would likely be the first to be euthanised otherwise as each shelter ran out of room. I loved them, but I had always wanted a dog of my own.

Henry in the hay he used to love to play in with his brothers.

However, for a long time my life, unbeknownst to me, was not my own. I had a narcissistically abusive parent, along with a narcissist partner, dictating what I was and wasn't allowed to do or be. Being even remotely independent being one of these things. Independent and able to make my own decisions, about things like, getting a dog, was another.

As I grew older I started to realise how dysfunctional and abusive these relationships were, and to become more and more independent. One Valentine's Day, after my narcissistic fiancée had two timed me for the umpteenth time and I was feeling utterly tired of it all, I went to the local post office to collect a parcel. I had received a card saying the postage had not been properly paid on it, so I had to go and pay the difference to collect the parcel.

Given the situation I was in, I stupidly thought that this parcel, that I was not expecting, and what with it being Valentine's Day, was going to be an apologetic gift from my fiancée. So I travelled to the post office and picked up the parcel. On opening it, instead of a gift, my heart sank but I was sadly not at all surprised, when I instead found ripped up photos of my cats and me, taken from my photo albums, along with a card my fiancée had bought. Except he had scratched out all of the nice words and sentiment it was intended to be used for, and written inside a horrible message. This was something he did regularly. He would buy a beautiful card with lovely words inside, then show it to everyone and tell them he was giving it to me. Except before giving it to me, he would scratch out all of the lovely words and sentiments, and replace them with horrible messages instead. Then people would think I was ungrateful and did not appreciate him, because according to them, there he was buying me these beautiful things, and yet I was unhappy.

I'm not entirely sure why I put up with this for so long, other than the fact I had been abused so long by my narcissistic parent, that I had simply become accustomed to being treated like dirt, and so I seemed to attract more of it. I was also used to being silenced, dismissed and ignored, so basically never spoke up for myself.

Today though, there was something about the abject cruelty of deliberately sending me this parcel, and the planned premeditated trickery of knowing I would likely think it was a gift, only for it to be cruel and horrible instead, that changed everything. At that moment I literally thought, probably for the first time in my life, "F**k this! I am no longer going to tolerate this!", and then I thought "F""k it, I'm getting a dog!"

I had essentially been "forbidden" from getting a dog, by the controlling narcissists I was surrounded by, and told constantly that I had to wait for other things to happen before I could live my own life. Things that never happened, and that they knew would never happen, as my life passed me by. Today was the day that ended.

I walked straight from the post office to a pet store I knew regularly had puppies. I knew this because I had frequently gone into their store to visit them, and always previously left empty handed. Today though, was the day I was going to get my dog. When I walked in there were 12 Golden Retriever puppies in a large pen they had. When I enquired about them, only four were still unspoken for. I wanted a boy puppy, and there were only two left of those. They were all beautiful, but I picked the darkest of the two that were left. I would have loved to have just walked out there and then with him, but he was due to have his second vaccination the next day, so I was asked to leave a deposit and come back the next day.

I returned the next day and took my puppy home. I had bought him everything we would need, and at the time I lived in a large semi detached farmhouse I was renting with a large garden and surrounded by fields. I felt like I should call him something related to Valentine's Day, when I had found him, but for some reason I felt his name should be Henry, and so it was.

Henry and I lived for a year in the detached farmhouse, along with my cats at the time. The garden was surrounded by farmland that often had cows in, and he would love touching noses with the cows as they leaned over the fence to say hello. A year after he arrived, I moved to the house I am in now. I specifically bought this house for him, because it had a large garden and a country park at the end of the road. The first night we moved in, we had no furniture and we slept together on the floor with him right next to me.

Everything revolved around him. We would go everywhere together and he loved everyone. He also loved animal after animal that came to live with us, including cats, birds, rats, and all of the other dogs I went on to have during his lifetime, Red, Boo, Gryphon and George. I redesigned my entire garden so that it would be like a figure 8 racetrack for him and his brothers to run in, and have a deck and a pond with a bridge across it, because he loved lounging in the sunshine on the deck, and playing with his toys in the pond all day.

It was just him and me for four years, then my Cocker Spaniel Red joined us. They absolutely loved each other. They played all day every day like brothers.

Henry, Boo and Gryphon - Now all at Rainbow Bridge

Then came Boo my Chihuahua, who would sleep on Henry's back like it was a perch, even from the first day they met. Then came Gryphon, who again, loved him, and would also sleep perched on his back, clinging on to him, like one of those mini animal toys you get with the pegs for arms, and snuggle up beside him wherever he was. Then came George, who loved playing with him and stealing his treats.

Gryphon perched on Henry's back.

When he was about 8 years old, we were all walking our normal path, when an adder, that had been coiled up on the other side of the path, and which we were nowhere near, suddenly sprung up and launched itself at Henry, biting his face, and staying attached to him as it gripped onto his lip. I had to physically remove and unpick the adder from his face myself, it just wouldn't let go. It was clear immediately he was having a reaction to the bite, he stumbled and then passed out completely, and I then had to pick him up and carry him the mile home. He was 44 kgs, not overweight, he was just a large tall dog, and somehow I mustered the energy to carry him all the way home, then took him straight to the vet. I then had to go to the local hospital to pick up the antidote for him. At this time adder bites were seen as rare, so vets did not carry it. A month later, his brother Red was also bitten by an adder as he ran down another path we walked.

Henry, Red and George - Now all at Rainbow Bridge

We spent many happy years together, the six of us going on adventures. I would carry a fold up chair, blankets and a pop up tent for shade, and we would spend whole days out in the countryside, having picnics and exploring. Henry had many happy birthdays, but I knew it couldn't last forever.

Henry on one of his birthdays

One day, weeks before his 15th birthday, we were all out on a walk together. When Henry was a puppy, he would race ahead of me on the path, but as the years went by he moved backwards with them, he slowly started to walk beside me, then eventually as more years went by, behind me. I would say to him "when you're gone, walk behind me, so even though I can't see you, I'll always know you're there."

On this day we were all walking and Henry was walking behind me. I turned to talk to him and he wasn't there. He had completely disappeared. He had never once in his life walked away from where I was, so I immediately knew something must be wrong. We walked back down the path where we had come from, and eventually I found Henry, on the other side of a fence he had walked through. Several years before, National Highways had come to our area and fenced off all of the countryside we had previously been able to enjoy. They had put up fences that had slats going across them, to prevent us walking through, but for some reason, on this day, Henry had decided when we got to the point where we had previously walk through, and now could not, that he was going to carry on anyway.

This troubled me to be honest. I knew he was getting older but he seemed so healthy, but the fact that he had walked down a path we had not walked for years, by himself, rang alarm bells in my head.

I then started to notice that he was doing the same thing in our garden. I had had the garden landscaped and a fence put across the back to separate a fruit and vegetable area from the rest of the garden. When we had first moved there, Henry would sleep in the area where the fruit and vegetables now were. I found him in the garden attempting to walk straight through the fence, as though it wasn't there, and as though he could just walk his normal path. As though he was seeing the garden not as it was now, but had somehow gone back in time and was seeing it as it had been years and years before, just like the path on our walk.

Days later, I was downstairs in the kitchen doing something in the morning, and I heard a bang from upstairs in the bedroom. I ran upstairs and found Henry had collapsed and wet himself, and that his eye had blown, he had gone blind in that eye and you could see it immediately.

I rushed him to the vet and he had to stay in all day having tests. I worried myself sick that this was it, he obviously had something seriously wrong with him and was going to die. I couldn't eat or stop worrying about him all day. I felt physically sick doing nothing but pacing up and down and unable to concentrate on anything else, waiting for the call that I knew would change all of our lives forever.

After he had been at the vets all day, a vet called and assured me that they had "ruled out anything sinister, and that he was in really great shape for his age and should live a few more years yet". He said they thought Henry had had a stroke and that had caused the blindless in his eye and his collapse, and that he might need some adjustments, but should recover. He then said they just wanted to run a couple more tests and then I could pick him up and bring him home.

I collapsed myself with relief, had something to eat, and then went online to buy him all the things he would need. I ordered him a wheelchair so he could still go for walks whilst he was recovering, or even if he didn't, nappies, supplements, everything I could think of.

45 minutes later the same vet called me again. He said they had done another test and found Henry had cancer behind his eye, that has spread to his chest. That he was in terrible horrific pain and should be put down immediately.

I will never forget those two completely contradictory phonecalls as long as I live. I also know that people will assume that I just chose not to hear reality during the first call, and must have been in denial. But I have them on tape, I know what was said, and the utter thoughtlessness, tactlessness and stupidity of calling me and telling me that they had "ruled out anything sinister" and that "he was in great shape for his age, and should live a few more years yet." Why that vet didn't just wait 45 minutes and do all the tests BEFORE calling me, I will never know.

Somehow, this vet, managed to make everything ten times worse. I had been prepared for the worst, I had been expecting it even, and then he called me and said all those positive hopeful things, and I had been so relieved, because why wouldn't I be. He then called 45 minutes later and said the complete opposite. I should also point out that whilst this would have been shocking and devastating to most people, I have Adrenal Disease, and cannot physically cope with stress, so the emotional rollercoaster this caused literally made me ill. Then when I queried how this had happened, how he had assured me that they had ruled out anything sinister, only to call me and say the exact opposite 45 minutes later, he began shouting at me and telling me Henry was in terrible pain and needed to be put down immediately, there and then, and that I should not be questioning this.

This made zero sense to me, especially from a vet that had told me only 45 minutes earlier the things he had. I told him I wanted to come and pick Henry up, and he again, insisted he needed to be put down immediately. I literally had to argue with him and tell him that if my dog was going to be put down at all, he would be put down at home, his home, and surrounded by the ones he loved, not in a cage or in a table in a vets somewhere, and surrounded by strangers. I told him I'd been caring for my dog for almost 15 years, and I wasn't about to just abandon him when he needed me most.

This bullying vet persisted, and told me I was being "selfish and only thinking of myself!" He was inexplicably angry and frankly I believe taking out the fact he had clearly made a mistake, on me. As opposed to grasping the reality of the situation, that this outcome was a lot worse for me than it ever could be for him. I again pointed out that actually I was thinking only of my dog, scared and alone in a cage in a strange environment, surrounded by strangers, and when he apparently wasn't feeling well. That was not how I wanted his last moments to be, it was not how his last moments should be, and since I had a choice, he wasn't actually dying immediately and we DID have a choice, I was choosing to bring him home.

The fact that I had to argue with this vet, that he was so thoughtless and tactless, and at a time like this, annoyed me on many levels, including the fact that I knew many people in this situation would have been emotionally blackmailed, emotionally overwhelmed and bullied into letting him do what He wanted, not what they wanted and into never seeing their dog alive again.

Henry came home. He was not in terrible horrific pain, he was on painkillers and these managed the pain he did have well, but I could see he was not himself, and I knew from his test results he was clearly not likely to improve. We all spent our last night together and the next day I got another more compassionate vet to come out and put him to sleep. He died in the home he loved, surrounded by the beings he loved.

I will forever be grateful that I did not let that vet needlessly keep him from us, and that the last thing he saw was all of us. Losing him was devastating, and I know how much worse I and his siblings would have felt if he had left for the vets and just never come home again.

I kept him here for two days. He laid as though he was asleep on his bed, as we all got used to the new reality without him. Then the crematorium picked him up.

I have always, wherever possible, and I know it is not always possible, brought my pets home. Whether they die at the vets due to illness or during surgery, or I have had them euthanised at home, I have always brought them home and kept them here to give us all the time we need to adjust.

I read on another pet loss site recently something which I know to be completely untrue. It said that there was little point in bringing a deceased pet home for your other pets to see, and for them to get used to the new reality, that people only did this for their own benefit, and that there was zero benefit in this for other pets in the home. I know this to be completely untrue. I know it from personal experience, and that there is research that demonstrates that animals, as mammals, just like us, need the lived experience of seeing their counterparts deceased, in order to more easily adjust to the new reality.

Why wouldn't they? If a pet has spent months and often years sharing your home with another being, why wouldn't they benefit from knowing what has happened to them, and that they have not just disappeared.

Again, I am well aware that this is not always a choice people have, things happen, they have happened to me too, and bringing your pet home, or having them euthanised at home, is not always an option. But if it is an option, it will always be one that I would choose.

I took this photo just after Henry died.

Henry just after he died

As you can see, there is something in it that should not be there. I do not know what it is, but I know what I would like it to be.

I loved Henry with all my heart. I was an absolute wreck when he died. So much so that I was attacked shortly afterwards, doubtless because I was vulnerable and an easy target for cowardice opportunistic bullies. I then developed PTSD, became even more seriously ill, and the accumulation of that, was that there were some incredibly darks days, weeks and months, when I wondered it I would survive, if I even wanted to survive.

Almost unbelievably, when I was already going through such a hard time, I confided in someone that I was staying alive for my other dogs, because I loved them so much I could not bear to leave them, even as bad as I felt, and the cowardice bullies found this out and poisoned one of my other dogs, in a deliberate attempt to bully me into suicide. They literally stated this as their motive.

I write this to be honest about exactly how devastating and overwhelming it really was, at that time. About how much of an impact the death of a dog can have on your life, regardless of whether it is recognised or not. That this, and coupled with everything else you might have to deal with alongside it, because we are always dealing with something else alongside it, life does not stop and wait for us to recover from our grief, we are still expected to deal with the stresses and ups and downs of life generally, can be absolutely overwhelming.

This is why I do what I do, because I do truly know how bad it can feel, how hopeless, how desolate, how lonely and isolating. I am not doing this because I have a notion that grief is difficult because I've read about it in books, or watched it in videos, I do it because I truly know how frightening and confusing the depths of grief can feel, how incredibly low it can make you feel, how it can warp your perspective of the future, and make you feel like there is none, and make you feel like you are drowning.

If I can help people understand grief, how it works, how it effects them, what to expect, and find a path through it where they don't have to feel so isolated, misunderstood, and can know they are not alone, it helps them to see the future sooner, and to have the confidence that there is one.

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