Tripawds Three Legged Dog & Cat Forum Archives

I've been reading Grisha Stewart's latest book and blog, and came across this post on grieving the loss of her heart dog, Peanut. The post is a beautiful narrative about her terror at the thought of losing Peanut as he got sicker and how she experienced his loss. Jack is young, but her health struggles last summer scared me and I spent weeks crying myself to sleep, thinking I was going to lose her. I would have found Grisha's thoughts helpful then, and I hope it can bring comfort to those experiencing loss here. 

At the end, she includes the following: 

Here are some things that I did that helped with my grief process and/or made grieving less complicated:

• Quality time - As he aged, I arranged my schedule to spend less time traveling and be home more with him. I arranged for quality time alone or with Bean when possible, although I also maintained my own life and non-dog hobbies. For many devoted dog lovers, their life is all about dogs. If you have more than one dog, that could be fine, but if your dog passes away and you have no other dog, then you may find you have no sense of self and don't know what to do with your time. So let yourself have a life. You deserve it.
• Filming - videos of us loving on each other and of him just walking through the forest give me the most solace. It gives me a way to reconnect as needed.
• Empowerment - choices I made for him were always in his best interest, within the constraints of life among humans. So things like positive reinforcement, long leashes and harnesses, carpets on the floor, training for him to actively cooperate in blood draws and vet procedures, predictability, ability to control his own proximity and interaction with stressors, and only adding in pain or discomfort when it was medically necessary.
• Being his advocate and <a href="