My Dog Died
I went for a lovely walk with my dog, and, well, my dog died. I didn't even say anything about that yet, did I? My dog died. The one I just made the video about, my daughter dog, she died. So there's that. And it was a nice experience. There hasn't been a bunch of misery and suffering. There's been grief, and it's been okay. Sure, there's been crying, and there's been me digging a hole and burying the dog in it right next to the shed where I'm at. It's been an experience, and I'm amazed people have reached out and said, "I'm so sorry." It's weird, because I'm so accepting of them. It's okay. It doesn't hurt that much.
What hurt a lot was when my dog bit my daughter. There was a ton of hurt in that. It's kind of like our idea of her died a year ago. When the dog bit my daughter a year ago, our idea of her died right there. And so when the actual body died a year later, the thing that had really already gone was the life of having her in the house, having her as a dog that was around all the time instead of putting her outside or in her own room. The idea of her was the main thing that died, and that was very painful a year ago. But a lot of good growth came out of that for me too, and for our family, in being loving and compassionate. I'm grateful today for the experience.
My wife and I cried, and we felt our feelings on it, which is really nice. Because to me, to feel my feelings means that's love. If I'm crying out of loss, that's how much I love them.
Grief for My Dad
I'll tell you what's been a lot: my dad dying. That grief just hits me randomly all the time. I had a contractor come over to fix my shed the other day, and I literally ended up in bed for 30 minutes crying in grief from just missing my dad, because he reminded me so much of him. My dad did a lot of woodworking when I was little. He built me a shed, and my dad would be smoking and listening to the radio. My dad was an alcoholic, and he got sober right around the time I'm thinking of. So here I had this sober man over who reminded me totally of my dad, doing the same kind of stuff. Even though my dad died five years ago, the grief just crushed me.
I love Peaches, and Peaches is buried right next to the yard. My daughter came through with a beautiful vision. She said she pictured my dad and Peaches going for a walk together in the neighborhood. I told her that is really beautiful.
The Decision We Made as a Family
The main grief with my dog was about a year ago. When my dog bit my daughter, that was the main grief right there. Our life as we knew it, with having a dog in the house, was over. We could obviously never have the dog around just in the house like we did before that. We had a lot of grief over that for a while, and there was massive pain the day it happened. And actually there was massive relief the day afterwards, like, okay, we're going to get through this.
We considered taking her to the vet. That was one of those things where very strong opinions came and went. At one point I said we absolutely need to take her to the vet and put her down, that it's not responsible to be having her around. Then I switched completely to the opposite opinion. I said, look, you don't just kill your family members if they do something you don't like or they hurt each other. So we went all the way around that as a family, and we came to the conclusion that the loving, kind thing to do was to keep her, keep the dog separated, and put the other dog out with her so she wasn't alone all the time. In some ways, it's kind of a relief that she has died on her own now, because now we can have the other dog back in the house and have a normal life with a dog again instead of what we were doing before. If you want to follow along with more of these honest conversations about family, grief, and everything I'm living through, you can find them in my Life playlist.