My Dog Died Today

For all the ways I loved her, she loved me most of all.

I originally published this October 2025, and spent a good amount of time after wallowing in a well of grief. Following a number of other changes in my personal life, I ended up permanently deleting the SubStack I was publishing to at the time and isolated.

I think we all grieve in different ways. This was very new to me. But as I re-emerge, it’s still important to me to give a nod to my companion who meant the world.

I never noticed the house numbers across the street from my California Dad’s until today. 608, Wisconsin area code. I texted him, “I don’t know what to do.”

“Oh yes come over now,” he replied.

My sister messaged me on Wednesday, “I just texted your old 608 number a bunch not realizing it was that number ugh.” I haven’t had that phone line since the year Dora was born.

Standing in the doctor’s office at Urgent Care for an intolerable amount of sinus and ear pressure I’ve ignored for 3 months. Waiting for the doctor, and I can’t help but cry again.

Looking out the only window in the room, there’s a bush with just one bunch of purple flowers left. You can tell fall is coming by how many flowers have fallen off.

And a hummingbird appears, feeds on the flowers for a minute. He looks a little bit like Henry who flies around the yard at home, but he isn’t.

And I think, “if I just give it a few more days, I’ll be alright.”

Until the doctor walks in and says, “are you crying?”

“Yes. My dog died today,” and now I’m REALLY crying.

She says she’s sorry, in a way that gives her own losses away.

The good news is she doesn’t think it’s an infection worth antibiotics. So she sends me to get Flonase, recommends an anti-inflammatory, and saline rinse.

Good old neti pot.

Standing in CVS trying to pick out a generic Flonase, and openly crying and today I can’t be bothered to care who sees my capacity for grieving.

When I got the call from the vet that her heart stopped beating, “I’m just down the street, I’ll be right over.”

And I couldn’t roll my damn window up. The motor just whirs and the glass goes nowhere.

I’ll tape some plastic over it when I get home.

At the vet’s office, the doctor sits me down in the room where they give you bad news. It has all the nice furniture. “There’s nothing more we can do,” and “she was a really sweet little girl,” but she can’t possibly know the depth of who she was all these years.

Of course we did Glamour Shots!

I dropped Dora off at 7:00 a.m and brought her body home in a box a little after noon. I seat belted her in, the most important passenger I’ll ever chauffeur.

In a few hours her body is hot to the touch. Warmer than any day in her whole life. Most people don’t realize — the earliest stages of decomposition.

Before rigor mortis, they boil up a little bit inside. Just enough to give you hope they could come back to life if you say the right prayer at just the right time.

I screamed in the car for a while at first. Careful not to stuff the emotions down inside where they’ll turn into sickness later.

I promised Dora we were getting healthy this time. I’m not about to let her down just because she died.

“DERP” indeed little lady. Derp indeed. ❤️

Cried so hard I had to pull over and throw up a little bit. Once I got home I threw up a lot bit more.

I’ve felt a lot of things when losing animals before, but not like this.

She was a really strange looking little puppy when I saw her at a pet store.

She lifted her leg up so I could rub her belly, silly, so I brought her home. I didn’t think she liked me, she was always bossing me around. I joked she’d be the perfect lap dog for some little old lady.

Turns out I was that little old lady. I just hadn’t gotten old yet.

She was always very demanding and I wasn’t a good dog mom yet. She’d bark and cry and whine and shake until she nearly imploded. The solution? Another belly rub.

Baby Dora, always asking for belly rubs.

It wasn’t until my last dog, Petrie, passed away that her and I really bonded.

That was only a couple of years ago. She turned into a different dog overnight.

I start calling her mama, because she really looked after me.

We had full conversations, call me crazy but we had an understanding. Barking for dinner, “well we have an hour drive home so I can’t do anything until then,” and she’d button right up.

The last time we howled together was last night, sitting in the hammock under our new patio roof, looking out at the yard. Wondering how we ever came to be living such a spoiled, boring, stable life.

I bought her after I broke my neck and had to quit working. When everything in my life was terrible and messy and ugly. I’d had two heart attacks, my eating disorder was determined to kill me. How fitting it should be her heart and not mine that stopped beating.

She was with me through an abusive marriage, criminal divorce, complete mental breakdown, several times I considered giving up for good, more than a decade of chronic illness, homelessness, and 5 years living in an ambulance.

It wasn’t always the greatest life for her, and I was so happy when we finally got to this place. A long overdue gift I owed her.

House with a yard, and a porch for her to lounge on at her discretion. She’d take turns napping on the couch and her favorite sheepskin outside during my work days. Quail and rabbit and squirrels to entertain her. We’d hike the surrounding hills, find a rock, and curl up in my lap letting the breeze blow her ears back.

Word of the day on my vocabulary app is bereft. Yes, Universe, I’m still listening.

Urgent Care doc also suggested chewing gum.

This is the cleanest my house has ever been. Anyone who knows anything about me knows I stress clean.

Taped plastic over my car window, I’ll figure out how to fix the motor tomorrow.

Maybe it’s morbid of me, but I washed the blood off her mouth and put her to bed in my freezer. Wrapped up in plastic and a fleece blanket for comfort. I slept a little better knowing the wild animals can’t get her.

Cutie pie in the ambulance ❤️

I won the lottery today; no I’m not joking. In my cleaning spree I found a SuperLotto ticket from last month I’d forgotten about. The irony. I’d gladly take a lifetime sentence of financial slavery if it meant she came home alive with me today.

I’ve been feeling the grip of death coming for her in some way for a little while. I had more fear than usual that a hawk or a coyote might take her. On road trips I worried someone might break into the car and steal her, or we might get in a wreck and she’d be fatally injured.

I refused to leave her alone at my house, in case a wildfire came to take her or the AC unit died.

One of her last teeth became infected a month ago and she’d been declining in small ways. Scheduled dental surgery. Treated her for conjunctivitis. She was sleeping more and stopped looking forward to our daily walks. I’d carry her most of the time because she asked me to.

My ride or die… Christmas Day 2023.

I was supposed to go hang out with friends this weekend in San Diego, would need a dog sitter for the day. I couldn’t seem to pull the trigger to schedule it. Was late to confirm the dental appointment and sign the paperwork, unconcerned if they were to bump us and give the time to someone else. Estranged knowing. Should I have called it off? Like watching the tide roll in, powerless because no matter what it’s rising.

She didn’t want to get out of bed. Woke her up at 5:00 a.m. pulling the covers back. Kissed her belly and said “good morning pretty lady!” It was chilly, so I wrapped us both up in a blanket for the drive to the coast. She slept snuggled up against me the whole way.

Kissed her again and again and again before the veterinary assistant carried her away. The only time she hasn’t protested someone taking her from me.

I don’t really need to, but I’m walking my garbage out to the dumpsters anyways. Keep your feet moving when your mind wants to call out.

Astrologers were saying “don’t schedule surgery during this full moon,” I thought they meant October 6th, specifically.

7:00 p.m. now and I think I’d like to avoid going to bed.

I’ll wait a while to wash the cases on her favorite pillows. She let me know that she was annoyed we weren’t snuggling enough the last night, until I fixed it and pulled her closer. Tucked under an arm, pressed against my side. Curled up against my stomach, sleeping sound all night.

It’s never been so quiet in my house. When I talk to her, she doesn’t talk back anymore.

The Flonase is doing something. The Wrigley’s doublemint is doing more. For the first time today I don’t feel like clawing my eardrums out or smashing my head against the floor.

Veterinarian over-seeing her surgery told me I shouldn’t wait to box up her things, and to put them out of sight when I get home.

But seeing her backpack on the wall is the only thing that makes me feel a little bit bright and a little less small.

She wasn’t just a dog, she was my reason for overcoming anything at all.

I washed her bowls, and threw away the last serving of dog food from the fridge. I don’t know why I portioned it, I should have let her binge it all. Brought her leash in and hung it where it belongs — next to her backpack on the wall.

It’s the first time I’m not running away from grieving, I want to feel it all.
For all the ways I loved her, she loved me most of all.

Edit: added the following a few days later, I’m still reflecting, still mourning.

This grief is a new, unfamiliar container for my love. It cannot be overstated the importance Dora held in my life.

It was an honor to love and care for her. She was my guardian angel and I tried hard to be a good earthly steward.

She is the reason I am alive today.

She is the reason I didn’t give up when I was sick and starving to death. Unable to keep food down day after day. She is the reason I forced myself out of bed when the exhaustion took 23 hours of the day to overcome. She is the reason I put my gun back in the case on days when I felt I had less than nothing left to give. The reason we walked the coast obsessively and I never gave into the temptation to swim out to drown. The reason I no longer keep a stash of medication that will bring a quick and certain end.

I made the bargain, “I’ll stay alive until she’s gone.” I never thought my health would recover.

I didn’t trust that anyone else could see her for more than just a “little dog,” and treat her right. She wasn’t just my dog. She wasn’t my pet. I couldn’t abandon her to just anyone.

She knew when I was struggling the most. Knew when to disrupt me, when to snuggle me. When to take me for a walk. When to let me sleep in or make me eat. She was my mother when I didn’t have one. “Mama,” I nicknamed her. She helped make me the better person I am today.

And through it all, she was kind enough to stick it out until I’d healed enough to stand on my own two feet. Until I was able to survive the loss of her without disappearing into quicksand. Not a moment sooner. She couldn’t have proven her love in any greater way.

“A lady always knows when it’s time to leave.”

She was my guardian. My totem. A safe place to keep my heart.

I owe her the tribute of living the good, long, happy life she gifted me.