Crushingly Expected Pupdate.

Bill and I lost Happy last night.

This means that 2018 has already kicked us in the face; I was hoping it wouldn’t do that.

I was unable to get to bed until about 1:00 am PST, and I’m writing this a mere four hours later. I was only able to sleep about three hours before I woke back up and tossed and turned for an hour. Once I realized it’d been an hour of tossing, I’d somehow wrenched my shoulder in my sleep, and my head was hurting from exhaustion and dehydration I gave up and took Kiki outside and started whatever amount of day I’m going to have today.

I started dehydrating spent grain. I turned on the electric kettle for water for tea. Somehow, in the process of all this starting my day, I misplaced my phone.

And then I decided it was time to tell the world (minus those who follow me on Instagram, who saw it first) that Happy is gone.

I call losing Happy “crushingly expected” not because he had been declining for a long time. I won’t say I would have been blogging about it if so, as I don’t know if I could have, but he was not. His decline from “fine” to needing to be put down was relatively fast, actually.

No, it’s crushingly expected because this is the agreement we make with most of our pets. We will love them completely and utterly and house them and feed them and play with them and they will die on us.

Put that way, it sounds like a pretty shitty agreement. But, as we are reminded every day with our pets or with memories of our pets, the time we have with them more than makes up (even as it causes) the feelings of loss we will eventually suffer.

And I have said it a million times before and then a million times more just yesterday as I steeled myself to let Happy go: it’s better than the alternative. It’s better than our pets outlasting us. And Kiki and Happy have/had already suffered that. I’m so glad he didn’t have to suffer it again.

It’s crushing that he’s gone. And to think that one day Kiki will be too. But I’m grateful he was here. I’m grateful our friend Jessie let us know they needed a home. I’m grateful Brooke and Krysti facilitated our adopting them. I’m grateful their previous caretakers trusted us enough to allow it. And I’m grateful for all the joy and laughter and fun over the last three years he was with us.

I know it’s unfair to put up a post about dogs without any photos but, again, I’ve misplaced it. I’ll fix the photo thing after I’ve found it again, probably after a nap sometime today. And some crying. Because that’ll happen.

4 thoughts on “Crushingly Expected Pupdate.

  1. I’m very sorry for your loss. Your devotion and love of Happy has always been obvious.

    You have my deepest sympathies. Take care.

  2. I am so sorry to hear about Happy. I know how much you care about pets and I know you did what was best for him.

Comments are closed.