on the death of my dog, Harley

Today is four months since Harley died. I wanted to write about it, but I didn’t know what to say. ee cummings wrote of “things I cannot touch because they are too near” and that was how it felt.  I haven’t wanted to write about it because I didn’t know what to say or I thought it would hurt too much, but I did post about the experience on my business instagram. Sometimes I motivate myself to handle things in an admirable way, especially when it comes to dogs, with the idea I can set an example for others. I honored my dog in her passing and in my grieving. Now, four months later, I honor her sharing my grief and in continuing my emotional processing so the legacy she leaves will be much more than one of pain and explicable guilt.

Over the 15 months before Harley died I took her to 8 vets, all of whom either explained away her symptoms or told me she was fine and it was in my head until I finally went to the university hospital at Texas A&M less than a week before she died. I trusted myself and how well I knew my dog instead of listening to the vets and giving up, but I wish I went to the university hospital sooner. I wish I mentioned the most important symptom and the one I didn’t share, that she was hunching her back to pee, which I’d learn right at the end was because tumors were growing in her urethra.

When I got back from the hospital I tried to manage my emotions and not be too distraught around her. I’d go into the garage to really let myself wail cry. We did the things she liked and kept to our normal routine of hikes and car rides and friends houses. She was more tired and I could tell she was in pain, but I had never lost a dog before. I was a beginner in this.

I spent a few days praying for a sign. I knew I wanted to make the call before it was obvious that she was in distress, I wanted to give her something we as humans don’t get which is the grace to exit our bodies without experiencing discomfort. So many owners I know who love their dogs and are terrified to lose them wait too long, making their dogs suffer a stroke, periods of incontinence, get to the point where they aren’t able to stand up. Dogs are so tough, especially when they know we are upset. I did the only thing I could think to do, which was pray for a sign that it was time and I got one. I felt a hand on my shoulder, then something nodded, as if to reassure me that this was the sign I asked for. I asked for another, different sign and felt another hand lay on Harley, as if to tell me we were held in this transition. I made the call to the vet who would come to our house.

That night I tried to stay awake. I let my heart break, but I also forced it to open. I heard Ram Dass saying that what is left when someone leaves is what occurs in the fullness of any one moment together, a shared connection of living love, for one heart to meet another in a way that inncoulates you from the uncertainties of life. I sat in complete horror, everything in me resisting what was occurring, wishing it wasn’t real. I also accepted it, stayed present for it, forced myself to meet my dog in love in the moments we had left together. It was completely terrible and also I don’t think I have ever been so present to any experience in my life.

In the days after I kept moving, saw friends, went to appointments but let myself be not okay, beyond sad. I heard Paul Simon sing “losing love is like a window in your heart. Everyone can see you're blown apart. Everyone can hear the wind blowing.” The next morning, my first morning waking up without her, I felt this little voice inside me ask “where’s my dog.” My internal alarm was going off. The radar that always knew where she was. The timer that told me to let her outside to pee. The schedule alert to feed her. The unconscious analysis of my day, the weather, yesterday’s activities so I could find the right time to get her the exercise she needed. These impulses I built over thirteen and a half years were all impotent. 

Intellectually, I knew very well what had happened the day before, but I could feel that my body was confused, for the first time in so long no longer being a distance from her body, no longer existing in relation to it. Instead of clamping down on what seemed emotionally excessive or unnecessary, immature, animalistic, I let down my guard and let what happened happen even though it didn’t make sense. I repeated the phrase “where’s my dog” with increasing volume and intensity as I tore around my house, looking in closets, the yard, the garage. 

I knew where my dog was. When I picked her out of her favorite soft pink bed to put her in hole in my backyard with her favorite toy, a letter, a photo of my guru, I could tell it wasn’t her. It was her body, but something was missing. I had such a real sense that that body wasn’t her, that the her-ness had left it. I wish for everyone to see the body of their loved one and know that the spirit has left it, perhaps it stays with us, or so I tell myself because when I reach out for her I can feel something is there.

I want to say the days after were the hardest. The pain was the most poignant, the emotional outbursts the most intense and longest. They say a griever has the veil between them and the spirit world lifted. Even as I was my most desperate I also felt the most supported by things I cannot see. My ancestors, my angels, my soul family, I don’t know who was there, but they were. A woman collapsed on her living room floor crying because her dog is gone and she’s all alone with 100 spirits surrounding her and holding her so she could feel their love. I had one foot in each world in a way I don’t today. 

I want to say the days after were the hardest, as a poem I loved wrote of heartbreak “an animal being birthed from my chest,” but it was hardest after time had passed, when I hoped it wouldn’t be hard anymore, but it still was. Grief would catch me unaware as I moved through my day. It had it’s grip on me and squeezed when it felt like it. When my friends lost dogs they would post an announcement with photos like this, then I wouldn’t hear about it again. I kept asking myself if it was normal to be crying every day for months. I was racked with guilt for everything I didn’t do for her. I fed her a raw diet of human food. I started a whole god damn business to hang out with her all the time. I didn’t go places that weren’t dog friendly, at least not for longer than 6 hours. I took her hiking almost every day of her life. I offended plenty of owners pulling their large or overly enthusiastic dogs away from her when I could tell she was uncomfortable, but I have been completely consumed by the guilt that I didn’t do enough for her, didn’t love her enough, that I failed her in some vital and unforgivable way. My therapist says when I think that I just need to translate it as my heart saying “I wish you were here.”

Between friends, family and clients over 100 people reached out to me when Harley died. I couldn’t believe it. Death is always a blur, but I know I counted. So many people had photos of my dog on their phone. People told me how sweet she was and how special she made them feel. They said their dog was more comfortable around her than any other dog or that she helped teach them good manners. They were impressed with her endurance. They appreciated her feisty spirit, strong mindedness and sass. Everyone thinks that they have the best dog, that their dog is special, but I felt like I had proof.

In my grief I was conspiratorially self conscious. I was afraid that people were only being so nice to me because I was single and childless, that I was some pathetic loner who had no one in her life except her dog. I loved my dog, but she was a dog, not a partner or child. She was an amazing companion, but still a dog. I can admit now that that little dog was my longest, healthiest, most consistent and loving companion. Learning to see her for who she was and give her what she needed, not what I wanted to give, taught me what love was. Becoming the person she needed me to be in order to provide her with a sense of safety in the world motivated me to grow, to do the inner work I was afraid or too lazy to do. I needed to find my own stability and balance, to ground in a sense of inner okayness so deeply that I could ground her, too.

Without Harley I wouldn’t have my business. I wouldn’t be able to teach what she taught me about what dogs need. I wouldn’t have had all that healing time in nature, 13 years of hiking with my dog. Those same years to practice putting someone else’s needs ahead of or alongside my own. I think that is the part I miss the most, caring for someone in that way, as if they were a part of me, having a direction, an action in which to spill my heart. I think this is part of why we get dogs, because the way our social world is set up we all have a backlog of love to give and no clear and easy way to give it to someone who needs it.

Thank you, Harley, for all those sweet years. Thank you for making sure I found my way to you, my little craigslist backyard bred dapple dachshund. Thank you for being my teacher, my companion. Thank you for inspiring me to do for you what it was so hard to do just for myself by myself, to heal. Thank you for loving me and letting me love you. Someday when it doesn’t hurt so much, I know that when I open my heart to be in love you’ll be waiting, tail wagging, to meet me there.