When my dogs died, the first question on everyone’s lips was when I’d be getting another.
‘Time to visit your local shelter,’ read one response to my Instagram post after their deaths. ‘You need to get another whippet’ and ‘Don’t forget, there are lots of dogs out there who need people like you.’
Amongst thousands of lovely, supportive messages, these were the ones that spoke loudest to me – and they hurt. Despite knowing I needed time to grieve my dogs, I began to feel guilty that I hadn’t rushed out to get another.
My husband and I adopted our whippet, Jess, in 2018. She’d been mistreated and passed around so we set about showing her what a safe, loving home could feel like. Dogs are resilient creatures and, despite her past experiences, she loved my husband immediately and without hesitation.
We taught her to climb the stairs so she could share our bed, sleeping under the duvet with her bony legs poking into our backs.
Jess came out of her shell around our friends’ dogs on walks and at the park, so we began our mission to find her a companion.
We adopted Otto, our Italian Greyhound, in April 2023. He was a five kilo bundle of character, chatty and nosy, and could often be found curled up against Jess’s side or snoozing under a blanket, legs akimbo.
Like Jess, though, Otto was gripped by anxiety, so much so that he wouldn’t let us near him. Through working closely with a vet and a clinical behaviourist we discovered that his brain was overproducing stress hormones, leaving him in a constant state of fight or flight.
It was a scary and painful life for him. We loved him from a distance and adapted our lives and our home to minimise his suffering. We split our days into shifts, taking it in turns to leave the house.
We found ourselves cancelling plans because we couldn’t get close enough to put his lead on and our days became structured around a rigorous medication schedule.
In a quest to find community I shared the highs and lows of our experience on Instagram and TikTok, where more than 300,000 people became invested in Jess and Otto’s lives and personalities.
I was comforted and reassured to hear from other people who were facing similar struggles, especially ones that had happy endings.
In 2023, six months after bringing Otto home, we began to notice symptoms of cognitive decline in Jess. It started slowly: waking up confused in the night, and barking at noises we couldn’t hear.
But the issues escalated and in May 2024, her health took a steep decline. Jess had arthritis, a brain tumour and had experienced a stroke.
One day she let us know enough was enough. She was in pain, stressed and panting, and was unable to relax or enjoy the things that would normally have brought her joy like pets, cuddles and food. We looked her in the eyes and saw that it was time to say goodbye.
Choosing how and when someone you love leaves this world is a burden and a privilege. We said goodbye to Jess on our kitchen floor and held her while all the stress and pain left her body. The moment was peaceful but broke our hearts. The memory will stay with me forever.
In the weeks that followed, Otto’s anxiety struggle escalated. We’d exhausted all treatment options, his medication was no longer effective and he went into crisis.
What was an extreme day before – hours of uninterrupted barking, trembling and shrieking at unexpected noises or movements – became his new normal. He was living in a constant state of fight or flight.
So just a few weeks later, at the advice of our vet and behaviourist, we said goodbye to him, too.
It felt like our whole world had collapsed on us.
In the months since our dogs’ deaths, my husband and I have decided not to dive straight back into pet guardianship.
Instead we’ve found other ways to have dogs in our lives while we recover from the emotional and financial strain of a year spent balancing vet appointments and complex medication schedules, never sure what we were dealing with or what to expect.
I began volunteering as a dog walker at Stokenchurch Dog Rescue and we made ourselves the official dog sitters for our family and friends.
But people online didn’t seem to understand our choice.
I received a steady stream of comments and DMs saying things like ‘What would your dogs have wanted? That you be sad forever or that you offer another poor, tortured soul a home?’
Research from the Dogs Trust found 89% of us find losing a dog as painful as losing a family member. More than half of us experience intense grief for over a year after our pets die.
The experience is very similar to losing a human loved one but often isn’t met with the same compassion. Experts describe it as ‘disenfranchised grief’ – grief that goes unrecognised and unvalidated.
As we tried to process that grief and settle into our new lives I found the pressure to get another dog harder to ignore.
‘Forget what you want. The dogs need you,’ one comment said, while another chimed in with: ‘I am sad that you aren’t able to help other dogs escape their horrible worlds. Your pups would want you to.’
The messages implied that we were selfish, leaving dogs at the shelter when we could be taking them home with us. But the truth is, we’ve seen how big a responsibility pet guardianship can be.
Pressuring people into adopting dogs when they don’t have the emotional or financial resources will only result in more dogs ending up in rescue centres.
I will keep ignoring these messages in the knowledge that we are making the right choice for ourselves. But as animal lovers we owe each other more compassion.
Let’s stop pressuring each other to move on and instead give each other the space we need to grieve such a significant loss.
This article was originally published November 24, 2024
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