Goodbye Kaylee

Our dogs aren’t our kids.  Maybe if you’ve never had kids they can act as replacements for that relationship.  But it’s still a mistaken idea.  Our dogs are not our children.  They’re our dogs.  But that is not a trivial relationship.

Dogs are intelligent, empathetic and loyal creatures that mistake us for family.  And so, we have lived with them for possibly hundreds of thousands of years until it’s become true.  We’ve formed a symbiotic relationship that is full of satisfactions and frustrations, misunderstandings and camaraderie.  In short, they become a part of our families and our lives.

But they don’t live long enough.  About every ten years, give or take, we have to say goodbye.  And that is truly terrible.  Three times before I’ve had to bring one of our dogs to the vet to be put down and three times, I’ve had to dig a grave.  I won’t say those days were the saddest of my life because losing a parent or a sibling or a child is incomparably worse.  It’s worse but it’s akin to the same feeling.  It’s terribly sad.  It takes the heart right out of you and leaves an empty feeling that hurts.

Next week it will happen again.  Camera Girl walks around the house crying and I feel pretty rotten too.  She’s planning what treats; ice cream and cake; to give her.  I’m picking a spot for the grave and figuring out how to arrange everything.  We’ve been talking about all the funny memories we have of Kaylee over the years.  It’s unanimous that she is the most lovable and loyal of all the dogs we’ve owned.  She will be missed.

Maybe having animals that don’t live as long as we do provides a foreshadowing of what we all must eventually experience; death and loss.  Maybe there’s some good that comes from it.  But it still feels pretty awful when it’s happening.  It feels like cruelty and betrayal and that you’re at fault.  It seems like they should live longer, maybe twenty years.  But I guess it would come to the same thing; maybe worse.

So, this post is a part of the grieving process.  Keeping dogs is a fraught experience.  We put a lot in, we get a lot out.  But the ending is an emptying of our hearts that makes you wonder if you should bring another dog into your house and life.  We still have a younger dog.  For the last twenty plus years we’ve kept two dogs.  But now we think about whether we should get a puppy.  Right now, we’ve said no, we won’t.  But I wonder.  Camera Girl is a hopeless dog lover and I know she’s always thinking about a puppy.  We’ll have to let time pass before we think about those things but I won’t be surprised if she changes her mind.  Old habits.

I can’t imagine what it is like losing a child.  When I hear about children dying, I’m horrified.  I was lucky in that my children were robustly healthy and never experienced any terrible accidents.  So, I have an enormous amount to be thankful for.

But having to bury a dog is a loss in the family and a thing to note in sadness.  Goodbye Kaylee.