August 22nd, 2022 / µ

Don’t give me numbers, when I show you my heart!

My dog would have turned 15 a week ago today. I miss him every waking moment of my life. And I always will.

He is one more loss I will associate with Denmark, a country from which I am completely estranged.

Nevertheless, one thing I have come to realize is that when your dog dies, the answer people will give you to your statements of sorrow and loss is a number:

Comment: “My dog just died.”

Reaction: “Well, he was 14 years old.”

That’s the response you get. That’s the compassion you are met with when your best friend dies, people tell you how old he was. And then follows the statement that gives you a feel for what motivates spur-of-the-moment assassinations,

“You can get a new dog.”

One, I can never get a new him. He was a unique personality, with a decisively better character than most humans I have bumped into during my life. Two, yes, my best friend was 14 years old. I am aware of that fact, thank you very much. But what does that have to do with my grief and despair?

I mean, if your kid dies in a car accident, you won’t hear me stating:

“Your kid was 14 years old. Plus, you can make a new one!”

Dogs are people too!

But what a dog mom gets when her best friend dies is a number, indicating that this is okay. It isn’t! I have every right to be sad and miserable and miss my best friend forever. And I would have had that same right had he been 99 years old!

I know it is paw-sible to love a human with all your heart. But I would take a dog over a human any day. Dogs are people, too, and in my opinion, they are much better people than humans. They have bigger hearts, and, unlike most people, they are 100 % loyal.

Every being is unique

Because you can never ‘get a new one.’ Just as no one human will ever replace the one you lost, neither will another dog ever replace my best friend. You cannot replace one unique little person, whether two paws or four. It doesn’t work that way.

But still, most people see only a human as a wonder and any other animal as a number that can be replaced. Human animals tend to hold the outrageously arrogant presumption that only the human animal is unique. They couldn’t be more wrong!

Now you may not agree, or see it that way, just like I cannot tell babies apart - They all look the same to me, smell the same, and shit all the time if they are not eating, sleeping, or vomiting! Bigger babies begin to have some personality; I admit that, but it does take a while. And it takes forever to get them house trained.

All losses require love to heal

My point is, next time you meet a pet mom in distress over losing her fur baby, don’t give her numbers. Give her your love. She needs it just as much as any other human animal who suffered a loss.

Thanks for reading! I hope you found it valuable and worth your time! Until next time, remember to get your facts straight and that whatever good times you have will never come back as bad times,