Saying Goodbye to a Pet

Dog grief is strange. Though they are members of your family, they are not humans and, as such, I feel we don’t grieve for them the same.

My tears are different when they are for a canine. I feel slightly silly crying over a dead dog, as if it were less valid, because I pick up their poop. I find myself laughing at my tears, because the memories I am holding on to with these animals are nothing but cute. Have I ever had a heartfelt and meaningful two-way conversation with my dog? No! The memories that come to mind of my dogs are of adorable innocence. I remember them eating a wedding cake. I remember Moxie’s room-clearing farts. These silly and laughable memories make their deaths, in some ways, more manageable. It’s a more light-hearted form of grief when we can laugh at it.

I’ve noticed you pet your object of grief more often when it’s a dog’s final hours compared to a human. You’re trying to make up for all those times you yelled at them to “Go lay down!” when they were just trying to get your attention while you were focusing on your term paper or, more realistically, your Netflix show.

When you find out your dog’s dying, you stop yelling at them almost immediately. We’re a lot more permissible when we’re thinking it might be the last time we’ll ever give them a treat.

Here are some facetious ways to honor your dog after their passing:

• Save their poop in a plastic baggie and show it to your grandchildren when you’re 80.

• Find a pedestal one might use for a trophy or important religious iconography and glue a dog toy to it.

• When in the anger stage of grief, yell at a random dog owner in the Honeymoon Phase of their dog ownership and comment in a raised voice that “They don’t know how good they have it!”

• Multi-phase suggestion:

• Get a recording of your dog barking.

• After they pass, have them stuffed.

• Attach a motion-sensor to their taxidermied body that plays their bark everytime you walk by.

Dog Grief, like all grief, takes many forms. Please treat it with respect and, for God’s sake, wait a few months before you get another dog.