We are grieving in my house. Snickers, our beloved cocker spaniel mix has passed away. She was just shy of 13 years old. Even though she was full of years, when your pet dies letting go is not easy.
You won't find her name in any record books. To us, she was one of the greatest dogs who ever lived. She and her sibling, Twix, appeared on her doorstep as throwaways a few days after we buried my mother-in-law.
When the puppies appeared, it was my plan to find another home for them very quickly. When the kids came home from school that plan changed. They were the happiest they'd just about ever been. This goes for my daughter, the dogs and my husband.
A few days ago, Snickers passed away peacefully. Now, we are in the process of picking up the pieces and grieving. Even though we have two other dogs, Twix and my daughter's service animal Tomlin, we still miss Snickers.
Pets are members of your family. They accept you as you are. They don't talk back, tell you all the things you did wrong for the day or do anything except love you.
When your pet dies letting go is a process that is different for each of us.
I've found some websites that have been helpful. Maybe they will be helpful for you too?
http://www.petconnection.com/articles.php?action=detail&id=3278
http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/pets/msg011647243867.html
I was so sorry to hear about your precious dog.
ReplyDeleteThis is for you Gayle......
Where To Bury A Dog
There are various places in which a dog may be buried.
We are thinking now of a setter, whose coat was flame in the sunshine, and who, so far as we are aware, never entertained a mean or an unworthy thought.
This setter is buried beneath a cherry tree, under four feet of garden loam, and at its proper season the cherry tree strews petals on the green lawn of his grave.
Beneath a cherry tree, or an apple, or any flowering shrub of the garden, is an excellent place to bury a good dog. Beneath such trees, such shrubs, he slept in the drowsy summer, or gnawed at a flavorous bone, or lifted head to challenge some strange intruder.
These are good places, in life or in death.
Yet is it a small matter, and it touches sentiment more than anything else.
For if the dog be well remembered, if sometimes he leaps through your dreams actual as in life, eyes kindling, questing, asking laughing, begging, it matters not at all where that dog sleeps at long and at last.
On a hill where the wind is rebuked and the trees are roaring, or beside a stream HE knew in puppyhood, or somewhere in the flatness of a pastureland where most exhilarating cattle graze. It is one to a dog, and all one to you, and nothing is gained and nothing lost -- if memory lives.
But there is one best place to bury a dog.
If you bury him in this spot, he will come to you when you call -- come to you over the grim, dim frontiers of death, and down the well-remembered path and to your side again.
And though you may call a dozen living dogs to heel, they shall not growl at him nor resent him coming, for he belongs there.
People may scoff at you, who see no lightest blade of grass bent by his footfall, who hear no whimper, people who have never really had a dog.
Smile at them, for you shall know something that is hidden from them.
The one best place to bury a good dog is in the heart of his master.
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