How It Begins
A puppy is a puppy is a puppy.
He’s probably in a basket with a bunch
of other puppies.
Then he’s a little older and he’s nothing
but a bundle of longing.
He doesn’t even understand it.
And then someone picks him up and says,
”I want this one.”
-Mary Oliver, Dog Songs
…and that may very well be the beginning of the end of all of us.
Universal Empathy & Understanding
Last week, a close friend from back home told me they had to let their dog go—one I knew when I was still living in Philly. One I spent drunken nights hanging out with at house parties.
And then a few days ago, my best friend told me they were putting one of their dogs down.
She’d been battling cancer for a long time. And gratefully, it was an abrupt end. She got to live fully right up until she couldn’t.
And man, I’ve cried a lot over both of them even though they weren’t my dogs.
Because it doesn’t really matter, does it? It’s not the same as crying over a celebrity. We’ve all probably had a full on existential crisis after watching 2 seconds in to a short reel honoring a well-loved dog.
Of course it kickstarts my neverending anticipatory grief with Knox - but it’s more than that.
There’s just this universal understanding of how special these bonds are and how, should we be so lucky, we will all eventually get our heart absolutely shattered by a good dog …and live to tell about it.
The Part We Don’t Say
Grief around dogs isn’t always clean.
Not all dogs are our soul dogs. Some are here to teach us more than we asked for and because of that, sometimes there’s relief.
And that’s hard to admit out loud.
I had a dog before—Duchess.
This was before behavioral training was really a thing in the way it is now. Before I knew what I know now.
She was dog aggressive. Human aggressive.
And I did everything I knew how to do at the time.
When I let her go… there was relief in it. Painful to admit.
And also—
she was really good to me.
And that’s the feeling and associated memories that have stayed over the years.
Not the chaos. Not the embarrassment. Not the stress.
Those things were real, but they weren’t the core of it.
The Gap
I think about what it must be like for them sometimes.
Living in a human world.
Not one built for them.
They learn. They adapt.
They try to make sense of it.
Their soul purpose, more often than not, to be our companion.
But a lot of the time, the weight of that gap is on them.
And when we don’t step in to help bridge it—
they’re just left to figure it out.
I don’t know if “lonely” is the right word.
But I do think there’s something about being understood…
about having clarity…
that changes their experience.
Why It Matters
Getting to make the most of the time you have with them. Getting to know them rather than coexisting with them.
Training isn’t about perfection. It’s about giving them a better roadmap and deepening the connection.
Because at the end of all of this - what we’re grieving isn’t just a dog; it’s a relationship.
One that somehow exists without shared language, without shared species and still becomes one of the most intimate connections we get.
And I think part of what makes it so different is this:
dogs are ours in a way another human never will be.
Humans have their own lives. They can leave. We can leave them.
Even our kids grow up and build something separate from us.
Dogs don’t.
Their life orbits ours.
We are where they look for everything—
for direction, for safety, for connection.
What Stays
And when they’re gone—
what stays isn’t how well-trained they were.
It’s who they were.
The weird things. The annoying things. The things that didn’t make sense to anyone else.
The things that made them them.
It comes down to this:
Did you know them? Did you take the time to understand them? Did you build something real with them while they were here?
In Loving Memory
Gemma & Lily
Steady. Constant.
Linchpins in lives that were still being built.
Carrying us through seasons we didn’t yet understand.
We’ll never be able to repay what you gave.
But you were known and loved.
And that will always matter.