No matter how hard I try to forget, I can’t shake that feeling that one day, my adorable dog would no longer be with me. I hate that feeling so much, and I have gone through it… twice.
When I was just a little girl, my father brought home a senior labrador, so old and fragile. I remember my dad saying that the poor pup, who we named James Bones, needed a home to spend the rest of his life in peace and love. We were all so happy, so delighted and then one day we had to say goodbye.
James was no longer waiting for me to cuddle up with… it was devastating. Then it happened again… and now I have another dog, who I also named James Bones. I love my dog, and the dogs who crossed the rainbow bridge, till we meet again, my lovelies. Here are some quotes about losing a dog & dealing with grief:
1. “Nobody can fully understand the meaning of love unless he’s owned a dog. A dog can show you more honest affection with a flick of his tail than a man can gather through a lifetime of handshakes.” – Gene Hill
2. “The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.” – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
3. “The misery of keeping a dog is his dying so soon. But, to be sure, if he lived for fifty years and then died, what would become of me?” – Sir Walter Scott
4. “There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.” – Aeschylus
5. “The bond with a dog is as lasting as the ties of this earth can ever be.” – Konrad Lorenz
6. “Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in. ” – Mark Twain
7. “I have sometimes thought of the final cause of dogs having such short lives and I am quite satisfied it is in compassion to the human race; for if we suffer so much in losing a dog after an acquaintance of ten or twelve years, what would it be if they were to live double that time?” – Sir Walter Scott
8. “Sometimes losing a pet is more painful than losing a human because in the case of the pet, you were not pretending to love it.” – Amy Sedaris
9. “If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.” – James Herriot
10. “I guess you don’t really own a dog, you rent them, and you have to be thankful that you had a long lease.” – Joe Garagiola
11. “If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.” – Will Rogers
12. “They say time heals all wounds, but that presumes the source of the grief is finite.” – Cassandra Clare
13. “If there is a heaven, it’s certain our animals are to be there. Their lives become so interwoven with our own, it would take more than an archangel to detangle them.” – Pam Brown
Have you ever experienced this? Tell us how you dealt with the loss and grief in the comments below. Watch out for Part 2.
Feature Image Source: Pixabay